One of the great challenges in the health field is to transform the results of research into services and products that reach the market and patients, making technology transfer necessary. Committed to the need to break the gap between research and industry, Navarra Health Cluster attended Transfiere 2024, the European Forum for Science, Technology and Innovation in Malaga, dedicated to knowledge transfer and improving business competitiveness by creating business opportunities.
This 13th edition brought together more than 500 companies and entities of the R&D&I ecosystem and we were there to accompany the different partner entities that attended: CEIN, Genbioma, Nair Center, and the University of Navarra. It also allowed us to meet with several members of health clusters in Spain such as SIVI, Bioga, CSG, BIOIB, as well as the Board of Directors of the National Federation of Clusters and AEIS, Clusters.es.
The forum brought together academic and research knowledge with the driving power of the business fabric and public administrations to promote collaboration in a global economy context.
Navarra, which participated with its own stand, highlighted its R&D&I potential in a presentation given by Mikel Irujo in which he detailed all the tools that startups and technology centers have to develop their R&D&I, including the call for grants for strategic R&D projects, and the call for grants for R&D projects.
Another presentation of great interest: “Innovation and transfer in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological field” in which key agents of the biomedical innovation ecosystem reflected together on the opportunities and challenges that Spain has to promote technology transfer in the Spanish biotechnology and biopharmaceutical sector. A country objective included in the PERTE de Salud de Vanguardia has as one of its cross-cutting lines that of ensuring collaboration and coordination between the scientific and business fabrics. One of the proposals worth highlighting is that of Beatriz Llamusí, CSO and co-founder of Arthex Biotech, who called for PERTE to be directed not only at personalised medicine and advanced therapies, but also to support other biotechnological and pharmaceutical developments that are also very valuable for cures and treatment of unmet needs.
Finally, the presentation by Raquel Yotti, from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, provided an update on the PERTE for Vanguard Health, which aims to transform the health sector with actions in which science, innovation and digitalisation go hand in hand to face the new health challenges. The main announcements include the opening of a new ISCIII call for the creation of new clinical research units, and the strengthening of commercial or pharmaceutical industry-funded clinical trials. This is good news for the biosanitary sector in Navarra.
