This year was the scene of an exceptional event in the field of life sciences. Indeed, for the first time since its creation, the Universal Biotech Innovation Prize was awarded to 2 projects: one in the “best biotech” category, one in the “best medtech” category.
Open to young innovative start-ups as well as public and private research laboratories, the Universal Biotech Innovation Award aims to highlight the most innovative projects in the field of Life Sciences on a global level.
Over the past five years, the award has been presented to various projects from France, Sweden, Germany and the UK.
For this 6th edition, 214 applications were collected. After an initial analysis, the 102 most interesting and innovative projects were selected.
These 102 projects coming from more than 30 countries were then evaluated by a jury of experts in the field of Life Sciences, professionals from the health industry and the European institutions. For this 6th edition, the jury was chaired by Mr. Jean Deregnaucourt, Executive Vice President of Business Development at Institut Pasteur.
The jury was composed of representatives of the European Commission, the European Commission and the European Parliament.The members of the jury paid particular attention to the scientific quality of the innovation, the intellectual property put in place, the quality of the human resources, the feasibility of the project and the chances of success on the market.
The members of the jury paid particular attention to the scientific quality of the innovation, the intellectual property put in place, the quality of the human resources, the feasibility of the project and the chances of success on the market.
The standard of the entries in the final was particularly high this year: the jury ranked 5 finalist projects from Belgium, France, Switzerland and Germany.
The Universal Biotech Innovation Prize 2014 worth €60,000 was awarded, this year, exceptionally, to two projects: Asceneuron and G-Therapeutics. Asceneuron is a biotech developing a therapy for the treatment of progressive supranuclear palsy. G-Therapeutics is a medtech developing a medical device to enable people with lower limb paralysis to walk again.
The award ceremony was held at the 5th Innovation Days in Paris on 6 October. Each year, Innovation Days brings together all the players in the life sciences value chain, including the most innovative biotechs, biotech clusters and associations, the business development divisions of pharmaceutical companies, investors, European institutions and intellectual property specialists.
The Innovation Award has steadily gained in notoriety and legitimacy since its creation in 2009, receiving even more innovative projects each year.
The 7th edition of the Innovation Award will be launched in February 2015 with a call for projects. The award ceremony will be held on 5 October 2015 during the 6th edition of Innovation Days.
