Young founders, start-ups, companies as well as investors and experts of the life science, biotech and health tech community came together from October 19-21, 2021 for a lively and exciting exchange on topics such as founding in the pandemic, diversity, internationalization and sustainability in biotechnology. The Summit was completed by start-up and investor pitches. The fully virtual conference format was a complete success.
285 participants from all over the world followed the exciting discussion rounds, lectures and pitches from a total of 76 excellent contributors at the BioEntrepreneurship Summit 2021 - more than in previous years. Thus, important topics such as founding in the pandemic, diversity, internationalization and sustainability in biotechnology were highlighted and discussed. The BioEntrepreneurship Summit is highly supported by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs and this year was sponsored by Deepli, Galapagos, Boehringer Ingelheim and Bayern Kapital.
Young founders, pre-seed teams and start-ups as well as students and scientists were able to talk to representatives of investors, biotech and pharma companies as well as representatives from technology transfer, accelerators, and incubators both during the sessions and during the breaks at eye level and expand their network. Networking was one of the most important topics and in so-called "breakout rooms" a lively and inspiring exchange took place in an informal setting. The program was moderated by Anthony Morgan, Science Everywhere.
The pandemic, the role of patients, diversity and green transition
In his inspiring key note talk, Jason Mellad from Start Codon outlined that start-ups are truly driving the bioscience revolution and are creating the future of medicine. He pointed out that one doesn’t have to be the first but the best.
SARS-CoV-2 put a spotlight on biotechnology, especially on German biotechnology. How the pandemic influenced and ultimately perhaps even spurred the work of their start-up, was examined by Caroline Xu from ViGeneron, Julia Moosbauer from deepc, Adrian Schomburg from Eisbach Bio and Dominik Schumacher from Tubulis in a lively panel discussion, hosted by Horst Domdey, Managing Director of BioM.
The realization that patients must be the driving force in developing treatments and not just consumers was impressively explained by Onno Faber from Rarebase in his key note on day two of the conference by sharing his own personal story.
„Congratulations to this amazing Summit! The selection of speakers is incredible and I am genuinely surprised how well the online format turned out - Chapeau.“ Patrick Großmann, Co-Founder of Invitris
An impulse talk by Valerie Alexander from SpeakHappiness on the topic of unconscious bias was followed by a panel discussion on what can be done to foster more diversity in biotech with the panlist Sophia Doll, OmicEra Diagnostics GmbH, Jesaja Brinkmann, Cara Care, Ingrid Teigland Akay, Hadean Ventures and Gemma Hernandez, WA4STEAM. The session was hosted by Johannes Schmidt from TUM Venture Labs.
“I was really impressed with the BioEntrepreneur Summit, a mix of truly insightful sessions and engaged entrepreneurs to discuss with. Good job BioM and looking forward to the next one! “ Aline Charpentier, Head of Innovation Support for the London-Cambridge Life Science Network OneNucleus
Is a green transition a must-have or a nice-to-have for startups in the life sciences? This was the question posed by the moderator Kerstin Hermuth-Kleinschmidt, NIUB Sustainability Consulting, of the CE4BIG Satellite Session. It was identified that global standards and measures for sustainability reporting are on the way and that collective awareness of environmental, social and governance issues is rising.
“Starting a life sciences business is always going to be a difficult endeavour that requires a large number of factors to go in your favour. Building connections between all the stakeholders of the ecosystem is a key component in fostering budding entrepreneurs and new ventures,” explains Petra Burgstaller, Head of inQlab, BioM. “We are very happy to see that the pieces came together at our first-ever virtual conference. But despite the success of our virtual conference, we are all excited to return to our in-person events.”
Rising Star Award - Pitch competition Award Winners
In two sessions, a total of 14 start-ups presented their innovative projects in exciting pitches to convince the audience. Afterwards, the conference participants were spoilt for choice to decide on the ventures in which they would invest in.
Daphne Collias and Chase Beisel won the most votes with their CRISPR/Cas-based project LEOPARD Diagnostics for highly multiplexed biomarker detection. Second place went to Jennifer Altomonte and Theresa Krabbe from FUSIX Biotech for their tumor therapy using oncolytic viruses. Ali Ertürk and his team from Intellegimed are developing the concept 'DeepPiction - Intelligence in Medicine' and reached third place. The teams can look forward to 12 months subscriptions for valuable start-up software, consulting support and professional pitch coaching.
But not only the young founding teams presented themselves. In the "pitches reversed" sessions, 16 investors introduced themselves - because as it quickly became clear in the panel discussions between successful founders and experienced investment firms: not every investor fits every start-up.
“Congratulations on a great Summit - relevant content and great logistic! Thank you very much for allowing me the pleasure of moderating the panel of great experts discussing scaling, and hosting the workshop on internationalization. My only wish was that it happened in person." Marc Filerman, Managing Partner at German Accelerator Life Sciences
Presentation of the 2021 m4 Award winners
The final highlight of the event was the announcement of the winners of this year's m4 Award. The Bavarian pre-seed grant m4 Award supports academic research projects with spin-off potential in medical biotechnology and biomedicine. The five winning teams can be found here: www.m4-award.org/en/award-winners. Each team receives a project funding of up to 500.000 Euro for up to 2 years.
„We would like to thank all the great contributors to the conference – it is this engaged community that is the secret sauce for such an event. We also thank our active participants and hope that the conference provided useful learnings, gave new insights and nudged serendipity towards cutting edge solutions in biotechnology and healthtech,“ closes Christina Enke-Stolle, Head of inQlab, BioM.