Boost Biosystems – creating a strategy for public-private collaboration in Medicon Valley

“If we are able to enhance public and private collaboration it can on the one hand lead to more jobs and new industries, and on the other enrich the academic basic research” explains Dr. Per Spindler, Director of BioLogue / Danish Pharma Consortium. “Medicon Valley has the potential to be globally competitive within Biosystems technology” he adds.

The region already counts several world class research environments within the field. “In the case of bioinformatics and systems biology we try to network top-notch environments in academia and industry”, says Dr. Thomas Schou, Head of Secretariat, BioSys Knowledge Network.

The EU funded project Boost Biosystems boosts research collaborations between companies and academia within biosystems technologies. ScanBalt, BioLogue and BioSys have arranged an executive roundtable with selected representatives from academia, industry and the support organisations from the Medicon Valley region to facilitat, strengthen and promote these collaborations.

The Executive Roundtable Discussion “Enabling private-public partnership in Biosystem technologies in Medicon Valley” will take place on 6 December 2007 at Carlsberg Akademi in Copenhagen. In the international context, the lack of interaction between players impedes the introduction of innovative Biosystems technologies to the sectors they could serve. By mobilizing actors in the Medicon Valley Region, this executive roundtable will provide an opportunity to create a platform for knowledge transfer, collaboration and common strategy for public-private partnerships in this new technology field.

The biosystems field has major focus in EU FP7 programms, reflected by several new funding opportunities. During the executive roundtable, these opportunities will be briefly presented and the benefits for the Medicon Valley region outlined. The outcome of the executive roundtable will be published as a white paper with an executive summary.

Biosystems technology is a cross-disciplinary field including several sub-disciplines within biotechnology, biomedicine, bioinformatics and microsystems technology. Biosystems focus on both technical (e.g. diagnostics, in vitro tests, pharmacogenomics and postgenomic applications) as well as disease related aspects. Improvements in biosystems technologies target unanswered questions in the diagnosis and therapy of major diseases (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, neurodegenerations, aging related disorders, cancer).

Contact:
Beata Grablevska
Tel. +45 35324148
bg@scanbalt.org