By Victor Dietrich, Junior Project Manager
On November 2, 2018, the Sino-EU Innovation Week of Health Technology wrapped up to great fanfare in the beautiful Nanjing, with innovators from Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and China. The attendees gave praise to the host's investment and life science community, facilitating Sino-EU collaboration in health technology innovation.
swissnex had the privilege of attending this high-level event during its closing days in Nanjing, in particular the inauguration of award and opening of ICCAMT-Nanjing, and had the opportunity to network with interesting companies in the field of biotechnology, health technology and medical technology.
You will find below detailed information on companies that were representing Switzerland at this event, as well as a summary of their products / services and the remarkable results they acquired.
Biognosys AG, a company that had collaborated previously with “our cousins” from swissnex Boston, was represented by Oliver Rinner and Lidia Novak. They won one of the 2nd Health Technology Innovation Award.
Biognosys was founded in 2008 and is a privately held company in Zurich, Switzerland. Originally an ETH Zurich spin-off from the lab of Prof. Ruedi Aebersold, Biognosys is a pioneer in the field of proteomics and caters to the Pharma, Biotech, Diagnostics and Agricultural industries.
Biognosys believes that the decoding of the proteome will impact life science more than the genome revolution a decade ago. They provide innovative services and products for protein quantification using cutting edge technology and strive to be the company that provides the best possible solutions to support researchers in their protein analysis needs.
Their next generation technology quantifies proteins with unbeatable precision and depth. The solution is based on mass spectrometry based targeted proteomics technology, which provides simultaneous quantification for thousands of proteins in a single experiment.
Dualsystems Biotech AG, represented by its CEO, Dr. Paul Helbling, won one of the 3rd Health Technology Innovation Award. Dualsystems Biotech does target identification on living cells using the LRC-TriCEPS platforms as their core technologies. They are a specialized proteomics service provider working already with 15 of the 20 largest pharma companies and with a large number of Biotech companies worldwide. They also support discovery reach by collaborating with Universities around the globe.
Dualsystems Biotech have the only technology published so far to identify the unknown receptors of ligands (small molecules, peptides, proteins, antibodies, ADC, biologics, Fc-fusion proteins, and viruses) on the living cells to elucidate the Mode-of-Action of a molecule by target deconvolution. With their TriCEPS platforms they have a tool to optimize, identify and validate the targets.
Further, they can identify new cell-cell interactions similar to PD-1/PDL-1 to identify new drug targets i.e. on primary human T-cells using the extracellular domain of any receptor fused to an Fc-tag to identify new drug targets. At the same time a large portion of the surfaceome (proteins expressed in/at the cell membrane) are identified.
The technology has been shown to be able to detect where the peptide/protein/virus and small molecule docks on the living cell.
MagCath ApS, represented by its CEO Niels Erikstrup, proposes an alternative option for women that are thinking about undergoing mesh surgery due to stress urinary incontinence. Surgery has risks and may not work at all. That is why MagCath ApS have developed and clinically tested a unique medical device called Obtinu.
Obtinu is a single-use, very soft, silicone tube, that the user herself inserts in the urethra each morning. The tube stays in place all day, and has an inner valve, which restores control over bladder voiding. The tube is pulled out and discarded in the evening, before going to bed. Obtinu has a high user approval as it is both comfortable and easy to use.
swissnex also had the chance to connect with Serge Perriard, Managing Director of BioTalk GmbH. Over a period of 12 years, BioTalk has also published the special interest journals BioWorld and BioWorld Europe. Since over 3 years together with their partners in Switzerland, Finland, Italy, USA, and Israel, they are focusing on building bridges between Swiss & European SMEs on the one side and Chinese partners & investors in their sector on the other side, and have organized and initiated many events, roadshows, and cross-border partnerships.
Among others, BioTalk has enabled excellent cooperation between the Swiss Technopark Alliance and their closest Partner company in China, Beijing YiGu Venture Capital Management & Consulting Co. Ltd. This leading healthcare technology developer in China is setting up and managing healthcare initiatives, incubators, and industry parks. Moreover, BioTalk maintains partnerships with many other industry & innovation park, event & media, and VC&PE investment fund managers, as well as with international relations managers from large pharma & medtech companies and with government officers, responsible for economic industry zone development in Hong Kong, Foshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Jinan, and Beijing.
swissnex would like to congratulate all the companies for their interesting presentations, great results, and engagement. A huge bravo to Karin Schütze, Managing Director of CellTool for winning the 1st Health Technology Innovation Award. A special thanks to Dr. Hui Wu and Matthias Hölling for the invitation and to iCCAMT, Beijing, TechnoPark, Germany Medical Valley, Steinbeis Stiftung and Business Sweden for the organization of this event.
