Items with tag "vision / opinion / people"
News
Janssen to team up with UGent and UZ Gent in industry-academia collaboration
Janssen Pharmaceutica have signed a renewal of the innovation charter with Ghent University (UGent) and Ghent University Hospital (UZ Gent). The move is part of an initiative to share more knowled…
Nominations open for Dr. Paul Janssen Award
Have you ever heard from the Dr. Paul Janssen award? It's an acknowledgement for biomedical research almost as important as a Nobel Prize. A trophy sculpture, along with $200,000 cash, will go to …
Strategic Ablynx - Sanofi collaboration for up to 8 Nanobodies in immunology and inflammation
Ablynx announced that it has entered into a research collaboration and global exclusive licensing agreement with Sanofi initially focused on developing and commercialising Nanobody®-based therapeu…
ABLYNX APPOINTS MARKUS EWERT AS CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER
Ablynx today announced the appointment of Markus L.E. Ewert, PhD, MBA, as Chief Business Officer (CBO). Effective from 20 June 2017, Dr Ewert will lead the Company's business development and corpo…
BIOCARTIS ANNOUNCES ITS NEW CEO
Biocartis has revealed its pick for its vacant top function.
Galapagos hires 70 people
This year, Galapagos will hire seventy new employees. Galapagos is growing so fast, that the company staff no longer fits into one building. "Since last year, we are located in two buildings in th…
Aratana Therapeutics gets award for Best animal Company in North America 2016
Aratana Therapeutics, a pet therapeutics company focused on the licensing, development and commercialization of innovative biopharmaceutical products for companion animals, won Animal Pharm's Best…
European patent attorney and biotech expert Caroline Pallard joins NLO patent office in Belgium
On 2 January, Caroline Pallard, partner and European patent attorney at NLO, joined the team at the NLO office in Ghent, Belgium. Caroline’s move from the Netherlands to Belgium not only strengthe…
MDxHealth Announces Preliminary Update on 2016 Results and Appointment of CFO
MDxHealth SA today provides a preliminary update on its year-end results, reporting that it expects to achieve its upgraded market guidance for full-year 2016 financial results following continued…
Continued coverage of Celyad's Patent assured
Celyad announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) has decided to uphold Celyad’s U.S. Patent No. 9,181,527, relating to allogeneic human primary T-cells that are engineered to b…
Cystic Fibrosis research projects wanted!
Call for research grants by Fund Alphonse & Jean Forton, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation, and Belgian Cystic Fibrosis Association.
John Berriman heads the Confo Therapeutics board
GPCR drug designer Confo Therapeutics has announced that John Berriman was appointed as Chairman of the Board. Berriman is a known biotech veteran and has served on the boards of many biotech comp…
V-Bio Ventures announces the final closing of its first fund, raises over €75 million
After an initial closing in November 2015, V-Bio Ventures now expands its already impressive investor roster and establishes itself as one of Europe’s largest early stage life sciences investment …
Oncodesign acquires GSK’s research facility in France
GSK and Oncodesign have signed an agreement for Oncodesign to acquire the François Hyafil Research Centre located in Villebon-sur-Yvette (Essonne) from GSK, part of the Paris Saclay innovation clu…
CMAST to be UNIZO KMO winner
CMAST, a consultancy company active in driving and managing life sciences companies, is nominated as the UNIZO KMO laureate 2016-2017. The four nominees all excel in entrepreneurship; a complex co…
Galapagos: Company of the Year
The Mechelen-based Galapagos received yesterday in New York the award for company of the year by the Belgian-American Chamber of Commerce, Belcham. This happened at the annual gala of the organiza…
Confo Therapeutics appoints Dr. Cedric Ververken as Chief Executive Officer
From October 1st onwards, Confo Therapeutics will be led by their new CEO Dr. Cedric Ververken. Ververken joins Confo Therapeutics from Ablynx, where he most recently acted as Vice President Busin…
Bridge2Health: the new link in the Belgian biotech chain
The Belgian biotech network just got stronger with the new Walloon incentive Bridge2Health. Formerly known as sCINNAMIC, Bridge2Health (B2H) combines the expertise of the Liège University (ULg) an…
Indian Patent Office overturns Sovaldi ruling
The Indian Patent Office of New Delhi granted Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD) a patent covering active metabolites of HCV drug Sovaldi sofosbuvir, reversing an earlier ruling . In Monday's …
Confo Therapeutics appoints Galapagos veteran as CSO
VIB/VUB spin-off Confo Therapeutics has appointed Dr. Christel Menet as its new Chief Scientific Officer. Menet previously held the position of Director of Chemistry at biotech heavyweight Galapag…
GSK and Janssen most attractive employers in Belgium
The interim office Randstad awarded a prize to the most attractive employers in Belgium. They did a survey with 15,000 participants in Belgium, including students, employees, unemployed, housewive…
ThromboGenics accesses the Galapagos treasury
Together with its generally favorable results for 2015, ThromboGenics announced a collaboration with another well-known Belgian biotech company: Galapagos. ThromboGenics has signed an exclusive in…
Johnson & Johnson presents its new incubator JLINX, located at the Janssen Campus in Belgium
Johnson & Johnson Innovation is expanding its company incubation strategy to include a new multifaceted initiative in Europe designed to identify and nurture early-stage companies actively pursuin…
AbbVie in top 10 Best Workplaces 2016
On March 15th, the Best Workplaces of 2016 in Belgium were awarded. AbbVie, as the sole biopharmaceutical company, ranks in the top 10. In a nutshell, AbbVie’s strengths -placing it on positio…
CEO FLUIDDA wins Antwerp Young Enterpreneur of the Year prize
This year marked the 6th edition of the Antwerp Young Enterpreneur competition, highlighting the entrepreneurial spirit in the province’s younger businessmen and women. This year’s 4 nominees were…
Belgium is TOP biotech non-US hotspot
Genengnews, the US news agency for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology, published a list of 12 non-US hotspots for biotechnology jobs. Belgium is one of them! Other European countries, including G…
Insights
Women in STEM: fixing the leaky pipeline
Happy International Women’s Day! This year, in honor of the day, we’ve decided to highlight an important and personal topic: the lack of women in STEM. The problem is complicated and leads to a lo…
From scientist to entrepreneur: how a Belgian chromatography company came to be
Pharmafluidics is a Belgian company rethinking the fundamentals of liquid chromatography. Introducing a fundamentally new type of stationary phase in its chip-etched columns represented a major in…
A Personal Translation of Microbiome Futures
Nature Biotechnology published a thought-provoking piece addressing critical questions in the development of microbiome-based solutions focused on disease interception. Co-authored by over a dozen…
The Benefit of BioVox – why science journalism matters
This year, for the third time in a row, the BioVox team is looking forward to attending Wallonia’s largest life sciences event: BioWin Day. Proud to support this excellent initiative, BioVox will …
AI and The Black Box Dilemma
Artificial intelligence has become a regular staple in our modern lives. With increasingly complex programs allowing for scarily accurate image recognition software and even self-driving cars, the…
Ghent knowledge hub growing strong
The Flemish life sciences ecosystem is stronger than ever. This expertise, in biotech and health, is plain to see in the gorgeous city of Ghent. The ‘Technologiepark’ area, located just south of G…
Lessons in Herding Cats: Business Development for Life Sciences Companies
Business development challenges can make or break a company in any industry. For a life sciences company, overcoming the added hurdles inherent in the field makes success even more challenging. Dr…
Are the days of journal paywalls finally numbered?
Europe has taken an ambitious step forwards in the fight for open access to academic papers. On September 4th, Science Europe announced the launch of cOAlition S: an initiative to enforce open acc…
Saving lives through fundamental research: James Allison wins Dr. Paul Janssen Award 2018
Dr. James Allison has dedicated his career to improving our fundamental understanding of how the adaptive immune system works. Much of what you will find on T cells in today’s immunology textbooks…
Uncovering the secrets of inflammasomes
Mohamed (Mo) Lamkanfi made the jump from academia to industry a mere eight months ago, to pursue a career with the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, as Head, Innate Immunity, …
DNA as a storage device for big data
Sometimes science fiction seems to become real right in front of our eyes. Slowly but surely, our genes are revealing all their secrets to us. We are currently able to read our genetic code faster…
CD3 as co-creator of drugs with academia and pharma
The Center for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3), based in Leuven, bridges the gap between innovative biomedical research emerging from academic institutions or SMEs and pharmaceutical companies. Th…
Big data, big produce – Trends in agri-biotech
In the last few decades, with the introduction of GMOs, the agricultural industry was turned upside down. Major consolidations between companies took place, while sustainability and big data have …
European collaboration project set to track all human cells
Over sixty leading European scientists are uniting in an ambitious project to track every cell in the human body. The FET-Flag LifeTime project will use and develop new technologies to monitor how…
From Academia to Industry: growing in new directions
What does it mean to “be a scientist”? People generally have a very academia-centric view: scientists do research, write grants and churn out papers. Yet there are many ways to work in a scientifi…
A world without disease: Janssen - Flanders.bio partner day 2018
A new vision was in the spotlight at the Flanders.bio - Janssen Pharmaceutica Partner Day this year. “A world without disease” was the slogan on everyone’s tongues as Janssen’s representatives and…
Caitlin Gillis at VIB - Foreign Scientist in Belgium
Caitlin Gillis left the sunshine and warmth of Australia a few years ago to come to live in Europe. After a stint in Paris, she moved to Ghent last year to work at VIB/UGent. Her research project …
After Ablynx, is an acquisition of Galapagos next?
The Gent biotech company Ablynx has been acquired by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi for 3.9 billion euros. The French Sanofi beat the Danish company Novo Nordisk to the deal after a much higher offer…
Politicians should consider the consequences of not deploying GM technology
Genetic modification (GM) technology can offer solutions so that farmers can more efficiently grow crops with less environmental impact. Despite many GM crops being developed in Europe, none of th…
Liesbeth Aerts in Sydney - Belgian scientist living abroad
Until August 2017, Liesbeth Aerts lived in Sydney, where she worked as a dementia researcher at the University of New South Wales. She studied bio-engineering and neuroscience (in Belgium and in t…
Personalized healthcare, a long-awaited revolution
Although it’s already 2017 and medicine has made great progress in the last decade, healthcare is often still very generic, following a “one size fits all” approach. To better monitor our health, …
Janssen R&D focus enforced with new managing director
Stef Heylen is the new Managing Director and COO of Janssen Pharmaceutica (Belgium), since November 2016. After a half year in this position, it is a good time for BioVox to have an interview with…
Connecting science and citizens
The ways people are conducting bioscience are changing. Cheaper equipment has paved the way for citizens to perform increasingly advanced experiments. So-called citizen scientists have recently be…
Better together: R&D and GMP analytics teamed up at anaRIC Biologics
Biologics are conquering the medical space. The need for high-quality analytical service companies for biological products has never been bigger. Unfortunately, fragmentation of expertise is a pro…
Market Access – the pitfall where innovations get lost
Getting your drug reimbursed by the government means the world. And gaining market access is a crucial turning point for many companies. However, this difficult and elaborate process is often unde…
Flanders Innovation and Enterpreneurship hands out over 500 million euros
Startup companies can get funding from the Flemish government for their R&D activities. Recently, the responsible agency was reformed and is now known as Flanders Innovation and Enterpreneurship (…
Music or neuroscience? Balthazar’s violinist chose music (at least for now)
For Patricia Vanneste, violinist with the popular rock group Balthazar, it wasn’t a choice she made lightly. Patricia has played the violin since she was five. It felt like the perfect hobby, mayb…
Second and third lives for known cancer drugs
While development of new cancer treatments is ongoing, innovators are also trying to further optimize the use of known cancer drugs. For instance, treating a sub-population of patients with a know…
Life sciences high on the UGent priority list
Interdisciplinary research is a top priority for Anne De Paepe, Chancellor of Ghent University in Belgium. Even if it means tearing down walls that have existed for decades or longer. “It is the o…
A new level of science: artificial evolution and complex systems
Pierre Collet, professor in Computer Science at Strasbourg University, is one of the key opinion leaders speaking at the BioWin Day 2016. He works on artificial evolution, the human physiome and c…
Wallonia’s life sciences cluster is bursting with activity
BioWin is Wallonia’s competitiveness cluster (pôle de compétivité) for life sciences. You could also consider it as the FlandersBio of Wallonia. A lot of innovations are happening in the southern …
Protect your intellectual property!
Do you want to start up a biotech company or secure additional financing? Nice! Do you have a great technology or an innovative product? Even better! But have you thought about how important it is…
Biotech financials: Part 1 - The bigger the company, the bigger the money
Belgium is internationally known for its flourishing biotech scene. Companies such as Galapagos and Ablynx are now synonymous with innovation and high-quality research, assets that are, in turn, w…
Lifting life sciences to the next level: a cross-disciplinary game
We at BioVox have mentioned the golden rules for life sciences success a couple times now: “Collaboration is key” and “Loners will be losers.” There’s no doubt that interaction between academia,…
The PhD of Sue Ellen : Start small to dream big
Sue Ellen Taelman studied bioscience engineering (with an emphasis on environmental technology) at Ghent University from 2007 until 2012. She wrote her master’s thesis on the sustainability of alg…
Why Nobel laureates are condemning Greenpeace’s anti-GMO campaign
Genetically modified crops are grown by 18 million farmers in 28 countries worldwide. In May, a federal study by the National Academy of Sciences declared that there is no substantiated evidence …
One year of BioVox! How did we do?
In May 2015, BioVox went live. During this first year, we created over 100 original articles covering the Belgian healthcare scene, agriculture and the bio-based industry. We tackled fundamental a…
The future of healthcare according to Maggie De Block: The cheaper, the better!
The tremendous innovations that lie ahead in medical care have presented a huge challenge for the Belgian government: How to provide affordable care for the patient when dealing with a very limite…
The Center of Human Genetics reveals all your secrets
Have a cystic fibrosis or BRCA mutation, or maybe a dangerous variant of the Huntington’s gene dangling in your cells? The Center of Human Genetics (CME) in Leuven will clear this out for you. As…
Diagnostics for better use of the healthcare budget
Developing a diagnostic test is one thing. Bringing it to the market while taking into account the product’s value for different stakeholders is a very different task. While clinicians might estim…
New technologies create legal issues
The technology industry used to be a rather fragmented field, where each company had its own expertise. Now, we are moving toward more integrated models, where developments in pharma, IT, medical…
AbbVie: a biotech company in a pharma coat
AbbVie was created as a spin-out of the pharmaceutical activities from industry giant Abbott Laboratories just over 3 years ago. This has proven to be a smart decision—despite fluctuating markets,…
Watch Liège becoming a major healthcare hub
Bridge 2 Health (B2H), previously known as sCINNAMIC, is a company whose mission is to valorize biomedical research from the University of Liège (ULg) and the Liège University Hospital (CHU de Li…
Protect what's yours!
Legislations and regulations aren’t exactly a scientist’s cup of tea. Nonetheless, patents and licensing are essential tools for any biotech company that’s looking to protect their assets and coll…
Collaborating for healthier lives
In the rapidly evolving healthcare space, it is essential for all companies – even big pharma – to keep up with how the sector is changing. Tom Aelbrecht, Head of the Janssen Campus Office at Jans…
The future health ecosystem: The new rules for success
Healthcare is currently having its “transistor moment.” Just as the invention of the transistor boosted computing capacity in the mid-20th century, continuous innovations in life sciences, medicin…
From lab to market: Pilot plants are key
Importance of Key Enabling Technologies Advances in novel technologies and manufacturing practices are essential to building and maintaining a global leadership position. With this rationale, …
The Year of Biocartis
2015 was a truly eventful year for Biocartis. It was marked by many transitions, which some see as a prelude to the company becoming a globally active market leader. Biocartis saw the source of it…
Why Bernard Coulie left Belgium for the US
Bernard Coulie studied medicine, worked for Johnson & Johnson, obtained an MBA, and co-founded ActoGeniX, which was later acquired by Intrexon. Coulie now works as CEO of Pliant Therapeutics, for …
Successful valorization of innovation: Paul Van Dun and Leuven R&D
Universities are a rich source of innovative ideas and discoveries, but the process of bringing them into the commercial realm is far from self-evident. When scientist-entrepreneurs need help sett…
Help! First aid for the Nagoya Protocol
The Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement concerning the utilization of genetic resources, entered into force more than a year ago. However, the compliance obligations and even the existence…
Dawn of a new era: How CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing cuts beyond science
Every year, the leading scientific journal Science selects its “breakthrough of the year.” The gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 was the runner up in 2013 and 2014, but it finally broke through and ea…
Biobanking: from leftovers to valuables
Current research methods rely on large pools of samples in order to test their hypothesis. For example, population level studies require large collections of sample material in order to investigat…
New money for life sciences startups!
While many investors shy away from financing early-stage companies, the VIB took the bold initiative to set up a new fund dedicated to investing in start-ups and young life sciences companies. …
Belgium’s investment market amongst the best in Europe
Investing in biotech requires big money; several financing rounds are necessary to allow a company to fully develop itself. Early stage financing is more risky than investing in more mature compan…
The Fournier-Majoie Foundation: guiding cancer research to clinical application
At 77 years of age, Bernard Majoie is as active as ever. As founder of the Fournier-Majoie Foundation, he dedicates his time to the battle against cancer. His philanthropic foundation provides fun…
How (not) to invest in biotech - Rudi Mariën
Rudi Mariën is without doubt a heavyweight in the Belgian biotechnology industry. After establishing his flourishing clinical lab BARC, he co-founded Innogenetics. Financing one of the first Belgi…
Better and cheaper treatment of Crohn’s disease: BIOCYCLE
Crohn’s disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in the developing world. It’s an immune-related disease, causing abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever a…
Biobanking: a vital asset for Belgium's scientific excellence
In 2014, three French-speaking universities of Belgium (UCL, ULB, ULg, in association with UMons and UNamur) joined forces, with the support of DG06, Innoviris and BioWin, to create the Biothèque …
Reindustrialization of Europe with a €3.7 billion investment in green industries
The bioeconomy uses renewable resources instead of fossil resources. Biorefineries play a central role in intelligently converting biomass and waste, via efficient and innovative technologies, int…
A perspective of the future - Towards a cure for cancer and much more
‘Within 10 years we will be able to cure cancer’. A bold statement? Paul Stoffels (CSO J&J) doesn’t think so. He is a believer. He is also persistent, passionate, likes to be challenged and cha…
The recruiting market needs change
You hold a solid degree, perhaps backed-up with a lot of experience, but finding a life sciences job that really suits you remains a struggle? Vacancies are scattered throughout the web and job de…
A sneak-peak into the future of life sciences
In Belgium there is a high concentration of bio-pharmaceutical companies, together with excellent research centers and universities. This is a unique and an important driver of innovation and has …
People doubt science: a case-study on GMOs
Why do people doubt science? This billion-dollar question was recently tweeted by Robert F Fraley, Monsanto’s vice president and chief technology officer. Accompanying the tweet was…
Challenges for the cell therapy industry
In an exclusive interview, Hugues Bultot, Chief Executive Officer of MaSTherCell, an emerging pioneer in the industrialization of cell-based therapeutics, based in Gosselies (Belgium) shares with …
Leave your comfort zone if you aim for success
Peter Carmeliet is the director of the VIB’s Vesalius Research Center (VRC) and a leading Belgian scientist who pushes the boundaries in interdisciplinary research and aims to translate new insigh…
Nanobodies®: small magical molecules for big difficult diseases
One of Belgium’s established biotech companies, Ablynx, has developed an innovative platform to produce small therapeutic proteins, called Nanobodies. These Nanobodies are being developed for the …
SMEs active in health have doubled employment over the last 8 years
The health industry is crucial in Wallonia and made it through the economic crisis untouched. However, this is still a fragile sector that must be handled with care. Walloon employment in the …
New in Belgium: a state-of-the-art integrated care cancer center
The University Hospital Center in Liège is expanding. The new comprehensive cancer center will be ready in 2018. The center focuses on high quality integrated care, and a large part of the buildin…
Walloon Cell Therapy Platform for mass production
As the foundation for the new Walloon Cell Therapy Platform begins to set in Gosselies, Wallonia gets excited about this new development. The platform, unique in this sector, will provide Wallonia…
IPO Bone Therapeutics yields 32.2 million euro
Bone Therapeutics – a Walloon cell therapy company specialized in bone fracture repair and prevention – shifts up a gear and raises 32.2 million euro in a 2.5 times oversubscribed successful IPO o…
VC Views
Closing the gender gap in biotech funding
Companies with a good gender balance consistently outperform those with only men in their management teams. Yet despite this, start-ups with female founders and management team members are consist…
Life after a PhD: alternatives to academia
Having finished a PhD in life sciences can often leave you wondering: what’s next? The classic question is often “academia or industry?”, with a lot of preconceptions made about both career paths.…
Are tech investments under threat by anti-science sentiments?
In biotech, company creation is usually preceded by scientific discoveries presenting solutions to existing problems. Because of this, early stage VC investment is, at its core, a science-driven a…
Forever young: the science of aging well
“Is aging a disease?” For a long time, the answer to this question seemed obvious: aging is a natural thing that happens to all of us. It is an inevitable side-effect of growing older. However…
Biotechs and subsidies - a fraught relationship
The ambition of any CEO heading a biotech start-up is to develop a new product and to reach patients quickly. However, drug development comes with long development timelines, making Biotech a capi…
Acquisitions of Biotech companies: a good or a bad thing?
When on the 8th January 2018 the news travelled that Novo Nordisk made a €2.6bn bid for Belgium’s Ablynx, only to be leapfrogged a few weeks later by the € 3.9bn Sanofi bid, we immediately picture…
Is innovation killing the pharmaceutical industry?
In the past few years, the speed at which new drugs have been coming to the market has accelerated significantly [1]. This means there is a lot more competition than before, greatly affecting the …
The leap from academia to industry
The earlier in development, the greater the risk. It’s an unspoken law in biotech that makes valorizing promising academic projects difficult to fund. Venture Capitalists (VCs) specialized in earl…
Curing all diseases in the next 20 years: the new hype amongst billionaires?
Despite the initial intent of charitable foundations to be not-for-profit, some of them tend to morph into organizations with bigger aspirations.
Biotech through the eyes of a financial analyst
Ward Capoen studied biology and subsequently obtained a PhD in biotechnology at Ghent University. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the John Innes Centre in the UK, to continue his career as a…
Inside a life sciences fund: V-Bio Ventures
V-Bio Ventures, the new Belgian fund for life sciences startups, is currently being managed by Christina Takke and Willem Broekaert. They both have a life sciences background and gained experience…
