On July 24th, Acceleration Day of the EIT Health BioEntrepreneur BootCamp with award ceremony took place at BioM in Munich. During the eight-week EIT Health BioEntrepreneur BootCamp, led by BioM, ten start-up teams from all over Europe designed and validated their biotech business concepts. At the closing event, all teams presented the results of their work in a pitch. Genwerk from Munich achieved first place with its business idea.
The teams worked for two months on their business idea during the interactive training programme. After four weeks of coaching at BioM in Munich, the participants travelled to partner organisations in London, Paris and Delft to learn from the experts in these networks and refine their concept for other European markets.
At Acceleration Day, all teams faced up to the critical questions of an expert jury. The team from Genwerk convinced the jury members with its business idea and can now look forward to participating in the EIT Health Summit 2018 on 5/6 December in Lodz. "The Boot Camp helped us a lot to translate our academic perspective into a concept that will also convince investors. With our validated business model, we are confident of making a real contribution in the fight against cancer," says Prof. Andreas Ladurner from team Genwerk. The founders from Munich develop drugs that hit the addiction of cancer cells to specific epigenetic mechanisms.
Second place went to ALAnostics from Switzerland, who are using nanomedicine to advance the fluorescence-guided resection of solid tumours. Pharmaforesight.ai can look forward to third place. The English team is working on a tool using artificial intelligence to evaluate the risk of investigational drugs in clinical trials and helping management to take informed decisions.
Dr. Katharina Ladewig, Managing Director of EIT Health Germany, praised the high quality of all business ideas: "The level of the pitches was remarkable. In addition, the different nationalities of the teams reflect the European idea of EIT Health very well". Jury member Dr. Gabriele Pestlin, Head of Strategic Planning and Deployment at Roche Diagnostics GmbH, was also enthusiastic about the event: “It was great - I was very impressed by the diversity of approaches from pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and artificial intelligence.”
In summary Angelika Leppert, Start-up Coach, Strategy & Corporate Finance, at BioM, commented: "It was a great pleasure for me to organize the Boot Camp and coach the ten international, ambitious teams. Furthermore, it was great to see how the teams developed over the eight weeks, but also how they opened their personal business networks to each other. Special thanks also goes to all speakers and members of the BioM Mentor Circle for advising the teams.”
The winners of team Genwerk may present their business idea again at the EIT Health Summit. This annual gathering will also host the finals of the European Health Catapult contest, in which healthcare start-ups pitch their concepts.
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