International collaborations

One of Biocat’s goals is to promote the internationalization of research organizations and companies in the BioRegion of Catalonia, ensuring stakeholders in the Catalan ecosystem have access to international funding instruments and programs and establishing relationships with other counterparts and stakeholders in the sector. Thus, the aim is to project the BioRegion as one of the main European healthcare and life sciences hubs.

Boost4Health

The mission of the Boost4Health project, under the Interreg North-West Europe program, is to strengthen and promote the international competitiveness of SMEs in the life sciences and human and animal healthcare, encouraging the introduction of their innovations on the European market. As part of this European project, Biocat has developed a network of life sciences service providers in the BioRegion that fit the innovation needs of SMEs in the other participating ecosystems.

Boost4Health has made €1.24 million available to the SMEs to carry out internationalization and validation activities. This funding was provided in the form of vouchers: specifically, 12 travel vouchers, 6 for market validation, 5 for product validation and 3 for impact, for various amounts, issued to several European SMEs. Furthermore, Boost4Health held a matchmaking event at Bio-Europe in November, bringing together companies from the healthcare and life sciences arena in Copenhagen.

The Boost4Health project features 11 sector leaders, along with Biocat: Brabant Development Agency, BOM (Netherlands), East Netherlands Development Agency, Oost NV (Netherlands), Biopeople (Denmark), BioRegio STERN Management, STERN (Germany), GM Business Support Ltd, MGC (United Kingdom), Kent County Council, KCC, (United Kingdom), Eurasanté (France), ID2Santé, Innovation and development of the health sector in Bretagne (France) and University of Liége, ULg (Belgium).

Onconet

Onconet is a transnational project that is part of the Interreg Sudoe program and aims to set up a permanent network of excellence in oncology with research centers, universities, healthcare institutions and companies. The goal is to boost research, technology development and innovation in this arena.

Under the framework of this project, Barcelona hosted the ONCO Emergence Forum, the networking congress focused on creating multidisciplinary consortia, networks and projects for collaboration in oncology, held in June 2018 and led by Biocat. More than 160 professionals participated in the event. Biocat also co-organized Oncothon, an event that took place in Granada in November, designed to inspire oncologists, bioinformatics specialists, engineers and biomedical researchers by presenting various challenges in the field of oncology.

The Onconet partners, in addition to Biocat, are: Paul Sabatier University (France), Navarrabiomed-Miguel Servet Foundation (Spain), Spanish National Cancer Research Center Foundation (Spain), Granada Health Sciences Technology Park Foundation (Spain) and University of Coimbra (Portugal). Catalan organizations are also participating: Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), as a beneficiary, and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) as an associate beneficiary.

LASER-GO Global

LASER-GO kicked off in early 2018, with the goal of facilitating access to markets in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Israel, Malaysia and Singapore for Catalan organizations and companies working in photonics and the healthcare and life sciences.

As part of this project, Biocat led a working package to identify partners, design missions, guide companies and host networking events.

bioXclusters plus

Biocat has worked to keep up the bioXclusters plus alliance, which aims to become the most competitive meta-cluster in Europe, providing internationalization support for SMEs and acting as a single gateway to Europe for international investors and similar in the healthcare and life sciences in markets that are strategic to the BioRegion (United States, Canada, Brazil, China, Japan, Australia and South Korea). This program is promoted jointly by Biocat (Catalonia), BioM (Bavaria), bioPmed (Piedmont) and Lyonbiopole (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes).