BIO Chicago: 35 Catalan companies and organisations at the benchmark meeting for global biotechnology

35 Catalan companies and institutions and fifty professionals attended the BIO Convention held in Chicago between 22nd and 25th April 2013. It is the main global meeting for the bioscience sector which brought together a total of 16,500 executives, researchers and investors from all over the world.

Specifically, the Catalan delegation —coordinated by Biocat— consisted of 25 biomedical, biotechnology and venture capital companies and 10 institutions, all of which who shared the Spanish Pavilion — coordinated by ICEX, with the collaboration of Biocat, BioBasque, Andalucía Bioregion and Asebio — with some thirty companies and organisations from the rest of Spain.

The main global biotechnology fair allowed companies and institutions to establish contacts with the engines of development in the sector at the international level and, more specifically, to license projects and technologies, promote their own franchises, introduce new products, find partners, publicise their activities and to expand into new markets.

Significant Catalan presence

It was with these aims that biotechnology companies dedicated to therapeutic areas of diagnosis and R&D services attended the Chicago fair, such as: AB-Biotics, Althia, Anaxomics, Archivel Farma, BCN Peptides, Biochemize, Bionure, Gri-Cel, GP Pharma, Intelligent Pharma, Lykera Biomed, Oryzon, Phyture Biotech, Plasmia Biotech, Readycell and Salvat Biotech.

With regard to research institutions, it was attended by the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Clinic Foundation for Biomedical Research (FCRB), the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona),Leitat Tecnology Center, the Health Campus of the Universitat de Barcelona (HUBc) and the BioNanoMed Catalonia and Oncocat networks, promoted by Biocat. This entity, along with ACC1Ó, completed the Catalan delegation present at the BIO.

Overall BIO 2013, held in Chicago, brought together 13,594 delegates and represented a total of 62 countries. 800 speakers took part in the conference programme and 25,573 one-to-one meetings were held. To all this must be added the 1,722 exhibitors and 167 presentations by companies.

Among the most important networking activities carried out by the Catalan delegation was the organisation of a dinner for Catalan, British and American companies to facilitate contacts and promote future collaborations. The promotion of the event was led by OneNucleus — the biotechnology cluster from London and Cambridge — and Biocat.

In addition, ICEX’s event Spain Kicks Off Biotech also took place, where issues such as access to funding, the keys to making agreements between pharmaceutical firms and biotech companies, and the new regulations of the sector in the USA were discussed..

Celebrating Sant Jordi in Chicago

Finally, under the umbrella of BIO, Biocat offered a traditional Catalan reception, as part of the official Hospitality Receptions programme. With the fair coinciding with the festival of Saint Jordi, the Biocat stand gave away roses and art books provided by the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) to attendees. In addition, the opportunity was taken to encourage networking between the Catalan participants and those from other delegations in a relaxed environment.