The General Directorate of Research and Innovation in Health of theGovernment of Catalonia will finance a clinical trial to study the protective effect of Ruti®, developed by Archivel Farma, on SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare professionals at high risk of contagion.

Ruti® is one of the most advanced therapeutic vaccine worldwide for different tuberculosis indications.

The trial will consist of administering Ruti® to 200 professionals and comparing the rate of infection and the clinical evolution of the infection with a group of 100 untreated professionals. The project will be led by Dr. Pere-Joan Cardona, biomedical researcher at the Germans Trias i ...

Hospital Clinic Barcelona, a benchmark in treating Covid-19 patients in Catalonia, has given CataloniaBio & HealthTech a list of its needs to pass along to biotechnology, medical devices and digital health companies and start-ups so they can help quickly address them through their R&D projects and products.

Biomedical company Avinent, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, and the Bages University Foundation have joined forces to create door handles that are opened with the forearm for the Althaia Foundation in Manresa (Barcelona). This model is safer in terms of spreading the Covid-19. They have also designed other safety materials the centre needed.

Avinent has manufactured these products using 3D technology, one of its lines of business in the field of dental prosthetics.

These three organisations (healthcare, academic and business) already had joint healthcare innovation projects under way.

Read the full article in Regió 7 (in Catalan).

The European Commission announced a one-year postponement of the application date for the new Medical Devices Regulation (MDR). The MDR was due to go into force by the end of May for all European companies developing and manufacturing these products for healthcare systems. The EC proposal will be sent to Parliament and Council in early April for approval.

This measure aims to take pressure off national authorities, notified bodies, manufacturers and other stakeholders so they can focus fully on urgent priorities related to the Covid-19 crisis.

A few months ago, the CataloniaBio & HealthTech Regulatory Affairs Workgroup held a training ...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has published its regulatory science strategy to 2025. The strategy provides a plan for advancing regulatory science over the next five years, covering both human and veterinary medicines. 

It comes in response to the acceleration of the pace of innovation and the need for regulators to be ready to support the development of increasingly complex medicines that combine different technologies. 

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic underlines the need for rapid and close engagement of all stakeholders and partners involved in the development and supervision of medicines in the European Union and globally, which is ...

Qiagen, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member with a subsidiary in Barcelona, announced it has received emergency-use authorisation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its QIAstat-Dx Respiratory SARS-CoV-2 test to diagnose patients infected with the Covid-19.

QIAstat-Dx delivers results in about an hour and is the first testing solution to be deployed in the pandemic that can differentiate the novel coronavirus from 20 other serious respiratory infections.

The technology for the new test comes from Catalan company STAT-Dx, which Qiagen acquired in 2018.

More information

A team formed by professionals from Hospital Clínic, Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona collaborate, on the Catalan Health Service's behalf, in the development of three emergency ventilators to treat patients with Covid-19. 

The launch of the three models (OxyGEN, Respira and DAR) at the same time results from the effort of companies, hospitals, research centers, university and administration. 

OxyGEN and Respira models have been approved by the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) and will now carry out controlled tests on patients  ...

Pharmacelera, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has been awarded a €1-million grant from the Horizon EIC Accelerator programme (formerly the SME Instrument) for emerging companies to accelerate innovations. The technology start-up received guidance from the Inveniam Group.

Pharmacelera is currently developing and providing software to accelerate drug research and development. One of the most popular is PharmScreen®, which allows users to virtually screen candidate molecules with a huge chemical diversity in proprietary, public or commercial compound libraries. 

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Pharmacelera and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre work together on drug discovery

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Grifols, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has entered into a formal collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other public health agencies of United States to collect plasma from convalescent Covid-19 patients and process it into a hyperimmune globulin.

The agreement also includes to support preclinical and clinical studies to determine the efficacy of the new therapy as a viable treatment for Covid-19 disease and as a platform for future emerging infectious diseases.

In addition, Grifols has accelerated the development and validation of a proprietary technology TMA (transcription-mediated amplification) based diagnostic procedure with a hight sensitivity. The test ...

CataloniaBio & HealthTech would like to express its thanks and support for all healthcare professionals (including our member centres, Hospital Clinic Barcelona, Hospital de Sant Pau, Germans Triasi Pujol Hospital and Hospital Valld’Hebron), as well as the start-ups and companies for their donations, for continuing to produce essential products and medications and for providing innovative solutions to tackle the situation caused by Covid-19.We’re compiled some actions that may be of interest to the companies and organisations in the ecosystem:

Virtual marketplace of companies

Under the framework of the collaboration between CataloniaBioHT and ACCIÓ, a virtual marketplace has been created ...

ACCIÓ, l'agència per a la competitivitat de l'empresa de la Generalitat de Catalunya, ha posat en marxa un marketplace virtual per posar en contacte empreses i fabricants de tecnologia i material sanitari per fer front a l'emergència sanitària del Covid-19. 

La consellera d'Empresa, Àngels Chacón, ha remarcat la solidesa i les capacitats industrials del teixit empresarial català i ha fet una crida "a les empreses que vulguin ajudar fent material sanitari o vulguin trobar proveïdors que els calgui. Des del marketplace els posem en contacte entre ells i també amb el Departament de Salut".

Aquest marketplace s’emmarca dins la ...

Leitat, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, Seat and HP have created a 3D-printed respirator to cover the lack of this essential equipment in hospitals and ICUs in Catalonia caused by Covid-19.

Manel Balcells, president of the advisory board to the Catalan Ministry of Health, explained to Catalan TV that “it is a respirator for an emergency situation that allows us to quickly scale up industrial production, to 50-100 units a day.”

The device was designed by Leitat engineer Magí Galindo and medically validated at Hospital Parc Taulí in Sabadell under the leadership ...

The City Council presented its Barcelona Science Plan 2020-2023 with €4 million in funds to continue promoting research and knowledge in the city through 15 goals and 51 specific measures.

The main focal points that will guide roll-out of the plan are based on boosting the international projection of university and science institutions in Barcelona in order to generate and consolidate alliances; earmarking specific funding for research into innovative solutions that have an impact on society; bridging the gap between science and society and fostering scientific vocation; and incentivising the creative links among art, science and technology.

The Scientific ...

Ability Pharma, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member with shareholders Inveready, Everis and Sodena, will receive €5 million from the Horizon EIC Accelerator programme (successor of the SME Instrument).

The EIC Accelerator provides grant-only support as well as support in the form of blended finance. In fact, Ability Pharma has been awarded 2.5 million as a grant and 2.5 million as a equity managed by the European Investment Bank (EBI).

This biopharmaceutical company based at the UAB Research Park will use these funds to begin a Phase-IIb clinical trial with the ABTL0812 anti-tumour compound on pancreatic cancer. ABTL0812 is ...

The Catalan Ministry of Health, Catalan Institute of Health, researchers at Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital and pharmaceutical corporations Gebro Pharma and Laboratorios Rubio, both CataloniaBio & HealthTech members, have kicked off the first clinical trial in the world to treat and control the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study is giving one antiretroviral drug to people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and another to people in contact with them. It will be tested on nearly 3,000 people and preliminary results are expected this April.

The project is led by renowned epidemiologist Oriol Mitjà of Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital ...

The Successful Ventures network of business angels is moving into the digital health arena by investing and joining the board at Devicare. The Inveniam Group has guided Devicare in this round.

The company founded by Rosendo Garganta is a leader in research and development of innovative solutions for urology conditions, and will put the investment towards internationalisation of Lit-Control® after having signed 45 distribution deals in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the United States.

Recently the University of the Balearic Islands and Devicare patented a compound that prevents the calcification of ureteral catheters and bladder catheters.

“We’re ...

Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has kicked off the Healthcare Entrepreneur Exchange Programme (HEEP) with Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester (United Kingdom). HEEP is the first open innovation and entrepreneurship programme jointly organised by two European hospitals.

The participants at both hospitals are from clinical and care environments, and will pitch their proposals for innovative solutions and technology. The five best from each centre will get mentoring sessions to develop their business plans and, after that, will participate in a pitching competition in September to choose three winners from each hospital.

In the final phase ...

The Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) obtained more than €1 million in profit by licensing the patent it holds to a new treatment for a rare mitochondrial disease caused by TK2 deficiency. It is the biggest financial profit generated by a Spanish research institute from a patent through tech transfer. 

In 2013, Dr Ramon Martí, head of the VHIR Research Group on Neuromuscular and Mitochondrial Diseases, and Dr Michio Hirano from Columbia University in New York, discovered this new treatment. Then they licensed the patent to the company Modis Therapeutics (California, United States) which was later acquired by Zogenix ...

Mediktor, a start-up with offices in Barcelona and New York and CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has launched a test to assess the symptoms of Covid-19 using artificial intelligence.

The test will be available online in several languages in order to provide support for healthcare systems around the world.

Users have to answer a series of questions from a doctor and the system will tell them how probable it is they have the Covid-19 virus. It also offers a list of conditions with similar symptoms to Covid-19 and a recommendation on what to do next. It is a pre-diagnosis and does ...

Aortyx, a spin-off of the IQS School of Engineering and Hospital Clinic Barcelona that specialises in creating endovascular devices for aortic dissections, has increased its capital by €650,000 in a round led by Genesis Ventures.

“This investment will allow us to continue meeting the deadlines we’ve set and moving towards our goal of launching the best possible product to market,” says Dr Jordi Martorell, co-founder and CEO of Aortyx.

The company has begun animal studies and will start industrialisation of its medical device with the goal of marketing it by 2024.

Both Aortyx and Genesis Ventures are CataloniaBio ...