On February 19th, a transnational partnering event in Stockholm was held to facilitate, strengthen and promote collaboration between technology researchers and entrepreneurs within biosystems technologies. This event was a joint effort of the EU funded project Boost Biosystems, Tartu Biotechnology Park, Estonian Embassy of Stockholm and Enterprise Estonia.
 
34 participants from 6 countries (Estonia, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Poland) registered to the event. Most of them represented industry and academia, but there were also participants from innovation support organizations. The participants were satisfied with the creative atmosphere of the event as well with the content of the bilateral meetings. “This kind of bilateral meetings are valued for their high rate of return in a sense of creating collaboration links with new partners as well as a source of information about foreign markets”, says Andrus Tasa, the CEO of a fast growing Estonian company TBD Biodiscovery. “I liked the idea and I think it was well organized”, adds Hanna Jakobsson from TATAA Biocenter AB (Sweden). Dr. Christa Nutzhorn from Cytocentrics AG (Germany) points out: „You have organized a great event with a lot of entrepreneural spirit and open discussions. We had many fruitful meetings that will result in new collaborations .”
 
The event also provided an opportunity for technology transfer from academia to industry and basis for establishment of new R&D consortia’s to develop a project proposal under the 7th Framework Programme. “Some concrete ideas and project drafts were defined at this event considering the focus of the next calls in FP7”, was the Vice Chairman of ScanBalt, Jaanus Pikani satisfied with the results.
 
The next international events to come in the frame of the project Boost Biosystems are Boost Biosystems Brokerage Event at the Hannover fair on the 22nd of April 2008 and Boost Biosystems Industry study tour in Hamburg on the 23rd of April 2008. 
 
Biosystems technology is a cross-disciplinary field including several sub-disciplines within biotechnology, biomedicine, bioinformatics and microsystems technology. Biosystems focus on both technical (e.g. diagnostics, in vitro tests, pharmacogenomics and postgenomic applications) as well as disease related aspects. Improvements in biosystems technologies target unanswered questions in the diagnosis and therapy of major diseases (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, neurodegenerations, aging related disorders, cancer).
 
Contact:
Kristel Joonasson
Tartu Biotechnology Park
Tel.: +372 7383053,
kristel@biopark.ee
www.biopark.ee