Report on the 8th edition of BioFIT in Marseille | December 10 & 11, 2019
BioFIT 2019: A great first edition in Marseille
For its first phocean edition, BioFIT confirms its status as the leading European partnering event for early-stage deals and investment rounds in the Life Sciences field. Over 1,150 attendees from over 35 countries attended BioFIT’s 8th edition: 120+ exhibitors, 70 speakers, 16 conferences and 4 projects elected as the most innovative in their categories were gathered in Marseille at “Parc Chanot” on December 10th and 11th.
A successful first edition in the South of France for BioFIT
Organised by Eurasanté and the three competitiveness clusters, the NHL Clubster, BioValley France and Eurobiomed, BioFIT was held for its 8th edition in Marseille, and has gathered more than 1,150 participants from more than 35 countries. TTOs, research institutions, academics, pharma & diagnostic companies, emerging biotech companies, preclinical CROs and CDMOs, pre-seed, seed and Series A investors were there to discover the latest trends of the sector and contribute to develop tomorrow’s innovative products and services in the Life Sciences sector.
Launched in 2010 in Lille, BioFIT enables partnerships between big companies and start-ups/big companies and academic actors in the field of Life Sciences. BioFIT is also the place for start-ups, technologies, offers and animal health projects to find investment opportunities by pitching in front of investors and big companies. BioFIT was created to encourage academic and industrial actors to build partnerships, to source innovative and competitive early-stage deals, to facilitate the emergence of collaborative projects, to increase licensing opportunities, to obtain funding and to facilitate market access.
For two days, overs 13,000 meetings had been generated through the partnering activity: the one-to-one meetings, which is the most efficient way to identify and connect with future project partners, obtain funding and then accelerate innovation.
MediSieve Ltd., elected as the most innovative start-up
Among 50 applications, 19 start-ups were selected to pitch during the Start-up Slams at BioFIT in different categories such as cell-therapy, cardio-metabolic, wound-care, animal health, cancer and CNS. MediSieve Ltd., an English start-up represented by George Frodsham, founder and CEO, is the winner of this year’s edition of the Start-up Slams, from the cancer category.
“We were very pleased to be one of the winners of the pitching contest at BioFIT. These pitching sessions are really valuable opportunities to showcase MediSieve to an audience of potential partners and investors, to share with them the work we’re doing and progress that we’ve made. Winning the award of “most innovative start-up” in a highly competitive line-up, was great further recognition of our work.” George Frodsham – Founder and CEO
MediSieve spun-out from University College London in 2015 to develop and commercialise magnetic blood filtration. The company has raised a total of £2.1M in equity funding and won grants worth a total of over £2M from the Wellcome Trust, Innovate UK, NIHR i4i and the EU Horizon 2020 SME Instrument. With the ability to specifically and selectively remove disease causing agents from the blood, magnetic blood filtration has the potential to transform the treatment of blood borne diseases. The company’s initial targets include Sepsis, Leukaemia and Malaria.
ALCEDIAG, elected as the most promising technology
35 TTOs, universities, research institutes and companies applied to the Collaborative and Licensing Opportunity Presentations to showcase their technology in front of potential partners in order to entail a collaborative project and / or a licensing deal. 9 of them have been selected to pitch during BioFIT in 4 different categories: diagnostic, CNS, cell-therapy and infection. ALCEDIAG, represented by Marianne Morini, Business Development Manager, received the “Most promising Technology” award.
“We are very proud to win this award! It means that our achievements in developing accurate blood tests for precision psychiatry are appealing not only to clinicians and patients but also to pharma companies and investors who were in the jury. We are convinced that this award will contribute to improve our visibility and to gain additional market traction in the coming weeks…”
Marianne Morini, Business Development Manager
ALCEDIAG is a precision diagnostics company with a first focus on mental health. The company develops blood-based diagnostic solutions for psychiatric diseases based on proprietary biomarkers. In addition, the company has developed a biomarker discovery platform that can be used for different types of pathologies (neuropsychiatry, inflammatory diseases, cancer) as well as cell tests allowing the modeling of the impact of drugs on patients and more precisely the potential psychiatric adverse side effects induced by drugs.
Velabs Therapeutics GmbH, elected as the most innovative offer
11 innovative offers have been selected among service providers and technology platforms that applied to the Service Presentations. They showcased their offer in front of potential clients. Velabs Therapeutics, represented by Dr. Christoph Antz, Managing Director, received the “Most innovative offer” award.
“I was attending the Pitch session in order to (a) leverage our company’s visibility, (b) to have an external and independent view on it by experts and (c) to increase our chances finding potentially interested collaboration partners during BioFIT, which, after all, is morphing more and more to a bigger European high quality meeting, comparable to BioEurope and other formats. I did not do it for winning the price, for sure. The announcement of Velabs as a winner really surprised me, as I felt the level of competition extremely high, having heard all the other top pitches. So last not least, I am happy about the price and very proud, that we could do it! We feel honored by the jury’s decision and hope to fulfill the expectations in the field, which is full of good concepts and strong competitors, even in our narrow field of microfluidic screening. We consider the jury’s vote as a validation of our concept and technology.” Dr. Christoph Antz, Managing Director
Velabs is a leading pioneer in microfluidics-based technologies for functional screening of antibodies. Our high-throughput screening platform allows for testing millions of correctly paired fully natural IgGs from humans and mice for therapeutic effects, rather than just for binding. Rare functional hits are readily identified, which might be laborious or even impossible using other technologies. Velabs’ antibody screens can thus significantly and competitively shorten pre-clinical development.
AND BioPharma, elected as the most innovative animal health project
3 innovative animal health projects have been selected among companies that applied to the Animal Health Collaborative Opportunity Presentations and showcased their project in front of potential partners and investors. AND BioPharma, a Belgium project represented by Peter Jens, CEO and Business Development, is the winner of this year’s edition of the Animal Health Collaborative Opportunity Presentations.
“AND BioPharma was present last year in BioFIT Lille and we were surprised about the gigantic partnering effort that was organised. As we originate from agriculture we are not used to “everybody doing it with everybody”. Yet we think it is the way forward. Diversity in partnerships will deliver the greatest value to farmers, patients and citizens alike. Hence, we opted to pitch our intriguing, disruptive and remarkable DNA selftoxicity technology in Marseille and, lo and behold, we won an award for “most innovative animal health project”. Of course, the project is really about improving mammalian health, but the industry still makes a difference between animals and humans. We look forward to be present at BioFIT 2020 in Strasbourg….” Peter Jens, CEO and Business Development
AND Biopharma stimulates, in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare providers, insurance companies and thoughtleaders, the natural balance between hosts and troublesome invaders in humans and other animals. By the development of efficient and effectual medicines based on the powerful and proven self DNA-inhibition principle, discovered and patented at Frederico II University, Napels, Italy.
Three regions with strong and dynamic innovation ecosystems in France are joining their forces to support BioFIT’s growth
A unique partnership between three powerful ecosystems (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Grand Est and Hauts-de-France regions) has been announced last year, at BioFIT 2018.
Thanks to an unprecedented partnership between the Clubster-NHL, BioValley France and Eurobiomed competitiveness clusters, as well as Eurasanté and the local authorities of these three French regions, BioFIT has now a foothold in Strasbourg (2020), Lille (2021) and Marseille (2022). As such, BioFIT supports the dynamics of industry and academic stakeholders in the sector and move towards the status of European leader in its core function: early-stage innovation deals in Life Sciences. Building on the strengths and assets of each region in which BioFIT is now organised, the event provides its participants with an ideal setting fostering interactions and significantly increasing partnership and funding opportunities.
The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region is the second largest French centre for Life Sciences research and the second French region for patent applications and clinical trials. It is also one of the most concentrated hospital networks in France with a vast array of research platforms and one of the most dynamic clinical, industrial and academic research activities in France. The region’s academic research laboratories stand out in immuno-oncology with the Marseille Immunopôle cluster, infectious and tropical diseases and clinical microbiology hosted by the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection (IHU) and rare and orphan diseases and neurosciences.
The Grand Est region is a hotspot for Life Sciences, in a cross-border region characterised by a strong Franco-German-Swiss culture of cooperation and concentrating a dense population of renowned stakeholders in life and health sciences with seven Nobel Prize winners, leading universities, world-renowned research institutes and over 600 companies, ranging from innovative start-ups to giants in the pharmaceutical sector such as Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi and Roche. More generally, the region excels in biotechnology, medical devices and digital health.
The Hauts-de-France region has a health sector with 1,000 companies in Life Sciences for 30,800 employees and a value of more than 12 billion euros. The pharma-biotech-nutrition sector employs 12,875 people and represents more than 50% of the regional turnover and 80% of the sector’s export turnover. Some of the major names in the Hauts-de-France region include Bayer, GENFIT, LFB, Lesaffre, AlzProtect and Diagast.
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Key numbers of the 8th edition: 1,150+ delegates |
Organisers
Eurasanté – www.eurasante.com @Eurasante
Eurasanté is a technology transfer tool, an incubator, an accelerator and a cluster manager in the Health field in Northern France. Eurasanté assists French and foreign companies, entrepreneurs, scientists and clinicians with their innovation and development projects. The region includes over 1,000 healthcare companies with 30,800 employees in this sector. Eurasanté also promotes and develops the Eurasanté bio-business Park which hosts 8 hospitals, 4 universities, 7 specialised schools, 170 companies and 50 laboratories within a European-wide scientific and medical site. Eurasanté also organises four international healthcare-related partnering events that aim to increase and improve interaction between academia and industry: BioFIT (Life Sciences), MedFIT (MedTech, Diagnostic, Digital Health), NutrEvent (Food, Feed, Nutrition, Health) and AgeingFit (Healthy Ageing).
Clubster NHL – www.clubstersante.com @ClubsterNSL
NHL Clubster is a competitiveness cluster and a network gathering 350 members committed to innovation in Life Sciences. NHL Clubster aims to connect academia, industry and health professionals and to foster innovation for better health and sustainable food. Its goal is to bring together and support stakeholders from the health and food sectors in designing, developing and financing their future products and processes.
BioValley France – www.biovalley-france.com @BioValleyFrance
Competitiveness cluster since 2005, BioValley France aims to federate, develop and promote the healthcare sector in the Grand Est region through innovation. The cluster is based on a dynamic network of companies, a leading academic and clinical research, as well as an integrated network of key stakeholders in innovation. BioValley France supports its members in their R&D Innovation approach and gives them access to high value-added expertise, in a market approach. The Cluster contributes to the networking of the various actors and the creation of regional, national and international partnerships. Finally, BioValley France actively participates in the territory’s structuring projects, such as Nextmed, which aims to create a Medical Technologies campus in Strasbourg that hosts an entire ecosystem of excellence dedicated to the development of tomorrow’s health technologies.
Eurobiomed – www.eurobiomed.com @PoleEurobiomed
Founded in 2009 by regional stakeholders, EUROBIOMED is the Life Science cluster from Southern France. We gather more than 390 innovative biotech and medtech companies, as well as leading research institutes, hospitals and universities. We lead territorial initiatives and help our members businesses and research organisations to innovate, finance, develop and achieve their scientific and business objectives, to ultimately improve the treatment and the lives of patients.
Eurobiomed tops European rankings in all stages of innovation: education, basic, translational and clinical research, technological innovation centres, start-ups and industrial success stories. Some of Eurobiomed main assets are the number of people involved, but also the quality of the network and trust that is established between its members, which reinforces the interactions and facilitates collaborations.
Institutional Partners
Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur – www.maregionsud.fr @ MaRegionSudPréfet de la Région Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur – www.prefectures-regions.gouv.fr/provence-alpes-cote-dazur
The South Region is the 2nd health scientific research centre, 2nd French region for innovation patents et clinical trials. The region as one of the heaviest French hospital network, a large variety of research platforms and a strong dynamic in clinical, industrial and academic research. The research laboratories are highly renowned in immuno-oncology with Marseille Immunopole cluster, infectious and tropical diseases with Institut hospitalo-universitaire Méditerranée Infection, rare and orphan diseases and neurosciences.
Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence – www.marseille-provence.fr @AMPMetropole
From Basic research to receiving patients and including medical cosmetology and the expertise from innovative therapies, the metropolis encompasses a very wide scope in the healthcare field. Infectious diseases, immunology, oncology, neurology, innovative therapies: an integrated organization, supported by a very high-level training base and supported by leading companies and laboratories and Eurobiomed Cluster. Backed by publicly funded research, this sector has extensive international connections. The Metropole Aix-Marseille-Provence proposes a Strategic Roadmap for the development of the Metropolitan Health Tech, which makes the health sector one its priorities, and which is concretized by a 3 year program of actions.
Ville de Marseille – www.marseille.fr @marseille
The health sector has long been a major sector of the regional economy, with nearly 170,000 employees and an estimated turnover of 18 billion euros. The Bouches-du-Rhône department alone accounts for 42% of this wealth. Provence, the gateway to continental Europe, has become a strategic destination for biotechnology companies. State-of-the-art infrastructure and entrepreneurship have created a favourable environment for technological initiatives, partnerships, extensions and relocations, particularly for start-ups employing impatriates. Extremely dynamic and dense, the sector is a major research hub in Europe. Marseille is the second most important city in France for scientific research, particularly public and academic research. More than 80 laboratories, belonging to the major French public research organisations (CNRS, INSERM, Universities, Federal Research Institutes, etc.) offer a wide variety of disciplines in medical research and life sciences.
Press contact
Valentine Delabie
Event Communication Officer
+33 (0) 3 28 55 90 60
vdelabie@eurasante.com