"At Health & Bio Team Dating, I found seed capital and a mentor"
<p>Elem Biotech, a new spin-off of the BSC-CNS, completed its scientific team with Genesis Biomed at the event co-organized by Biocat</p>
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centre Nacional de Supercomputació (BSC-CNS) has a new spin-off, Elem Biotech, created this July to do virtual simulations of organs and tissue for treatment discovery.
In October 2017, company co-founder Mariano Vázquez attended the Health & Bio Team Dating event, organized by Banc Sabadell, Biocat and CataloniaBio & HealthTech to bring together scientific projects and mentors, entrepreneurs and business development professionals. "At that moment, we were still developing the idea and had the first prototype of our business plan. We were looking for a mentor who could contribute a business viewpoint to my scientific profile, as well as seed capital," explains Vázquez. At the Health & Bio Team Dating event, he met with Genesis Biomed and attracted the attention of the company's founder, Josep Lluís Falcó, who has joined the project as a mentor and investor.
"At first, we were thinking of selling our service to medical technology companies, but we've seen that we can also reach clinical practice and pharmaceutical companies," highlights Vázquez. "For example, our system can simulate how molecules from an inhaler enter the human body and calculate how the body assimilates them."
Genesis Biomed was the spin-off's first investor, with €75,000, but an additional €200,000 has now been raised from small investors, some from abroad.
At the BSC, they are continuing to develop the simulation program, which has received a donation of €100,000 from Medtronic. Next steps? "We're starting to visit our first potential clients to offer them the product but our main goal is to make it a software as a service model: in early 2019 we hope to have a prototype ready and close series-A funding before next summer," says Vázquez. They won't be alone: in addition to the team put together thanks to Health & Bio Team Dating, the company has Christopher Morton, Guillaume Houzeaux and José María Cela on board as co-founders and expects to expand the technical team in the final quarter of 2018.
With the support of*:
* With the support of the Department of Enterprise and Knowledge and the co-financing of the ESF