Bilbao hosted the 13th edition of BioSpain this week, Spain's leading biotech gathering and a key European reference in life sciences. From 29 September to 1 October, the Bilbao Exhibition Centre brought together industry, research, investment and institutions around four thematic areas: policy, health, bioeconomy and financing.

As a collaborator of the event, we took part in two key sessions. Avencia Sánchez-Mejías, from Integra Therapeutics and a member of the Catalonia.health ecosystem, joined the panel Biomanufacturing at an Inflection Point: Technology Breakthroughs, Scale-Up Challenges and the Future of the CMO Model, which focused on technological advances, scale-up challenges and the evolution of the CMO/CDMO model in biomanufacturing.

Through ACESABIO, the alliance of Spanish health and biosciences clusters of which we are part, we also took part in the panel The Role of Regional Ecosystems in Driving the Biotech Sector. The session explored the role of clusters and bioregions in the development of the sector and discussed the European Biotech Act proposal to strengthen biotech cluster networks.

Many of our members were also actively involved throughout the event.