Biocat and Johns Hopkins University sign agreement to drive technology transfer

Wes Blakeslee, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Center (Baltimore, Maryland, USA), and Manel Balcells, president of the Biocat Executive Committee, signed an agreement today to drive mutual collaboration in research, technology transfer and business entrepreneurialism in the life sciences field.

Johns Hopkins University (JHU), ranked number one in the United States in science by the National Science Foundation, collaborates with some thirty Nobel Prize winners. This university is a benchmark in technology transfer, working since 1960 and through their technology transfer center to drive the protection and commercialization of technology developed by their researchers and to promote networking with other international entrepreneurs and companies in order to add value to the results of their research.

Biocat initiated contact with JHU in spring of 2009, when they accompanied a delegation of Catalan and Spanish companies and organizations on a mission to Maryland to raise awareness in the American market of the potential and opportunities the Catalan biotechnology sector offers.

Collaboration over more than a year with the heads of technology transfer from this university has led to this cooperation agreement, which is aimed at promoting the assets and skills of the BioRegion of Catalonia and the JHU in both of these areas. The activities that will be facilitated by this cooperation include research collaborations, technology commercialization initiatives, research grants, business development support and grants to relocate to innovative spaces.

The agreement, which will initially last two years, is part of Biocat’s strategy to promote international cooperation and cluster consolidation by supporting technology transfer.

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