UTILE Project invited 9 promising health and life science projects funded under FP7 and Horizon 2020 Funding Programmes to attend its 2nd Business and Innovation Training Workshop and the Brokerage Event on October 10th and 11th 2018 in Bologna Italy, in the framework of the most important international event dedicated to the Life Science sector, the Meet in Italy for Life Sciences 2018. The selected projects had therefore the chance to benefit from free training and to pitch in front of international investors and industry representatives with the aim to commercialize their research results.
The 2nd Business and innovation Workshop took place on the 10th October and focused on three domains: IPR, access to finance and commercialisation routes.
Dr Teresa Cunha (MT Consulting) explained how to protect and manage the assets emerging from research projects. Ms. Lian van Amerongen and Ms. Michelle Poirot from PNO continued exploring the opportunities for public funding mainly through Horizon 2020, Eurostars and Interreg schemes. Finally, the potential commercialisation routes to market in the health sector were illustrated by Dr Anji Miller, Senior Business Manager LifeArc.
The three sessions generated questions and discussions from the responsive participants who were encouraged to exchange experience and share the challenges they face. This positive feedback proves there is a great need for similar workshops in the case of health research projects.
The training workshop was followed by a high-quality coaching session to help participating projects improve their pitching skills to investors in view of the UTILE Brokerage Event of the following day where 6 projects pitched their results receiving appreciations and inputs from both industry representatives and health investors.
“It was definitely an useful event because it is always good to improve the slide presentation and force you to condense your thoughts in a way that can be understood by a diverse audience”, Wian de Jongh said, representing the AdaptVac Project, funded under the FP7 Programme and aiming at the development of highly competitive vaccines and therapeutics against infectious diseases, cancer, and immunological disorders.
Mark Wilson, Consultant in the Biotech Industry, helped reviewing the presentations and stated “I was very impressed by some of them. The most advanced of those projects are clearly of interest for potential pharma partners because they have a clear licensing potential”. “It was a very enjoyable and positive professional experience and I commend the people who are developing those initiatives”, he commented.
For the players in the life science and health sector involved in R&D, business development or commercialisation activities UTILE is developing the EU-Health innovation marketplace an online tool to valorise FP7 Health and Horizon2020 SC1 project results.
For further details, take a look at the dedicated press release and visit the project website at: https://www.health-breakthrough.eu/
