BCN, 5 May 2021.- A team from the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG), part of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), will take part in the 2021 edition of The Collider program, an initiative run by the Mobile World Capital Foundation.

 

The program will evaluate the impact of a potential spin-off involving genomic data analysis technologies and their integration with clinical data to improve the diagnosis of diseases, a key aspect in the new era of personalized medicine.

 

The work is one of 15 projects selected by the Government of Catalonia’s Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement. The selected research centres and teams will receive grants of 2,000 euros to facilitate the research team’s adaptation to entrepreneurial activity.

 

The Collider is an innovation program by the Mobile World Capital Foundation in collaboration with the Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement. It aims to bring science closer to business, encouraging entrepreneurship in universities and research centes.

 

The program prioritises supporting science-based projects that have already passed the laboratory validation phase, but which are not yet ready for business to collaborate with.

 

The program organizes an annual edition and its activity revolves around 3 areas:

  • - Promotion of high-tech projects (Deep-Tech) that respond to the needs of industry
  • - Creation of multidisciplinary teams combining scientific talent (Call for Technologies) and entrepreneurship to lead these projects (Call for Talent)
  • - Incubation and support of technological projects in their marketing, placing projects within companies after their validation phase

 

A total of 268 applications were received this year, of which 39 have been qualified and have reached the final. Of these 39 qualified projects, 54% are from Catalonia; 38% in Spain and 8% in the rest of the world. The predominant sectors among the proposals are health, agrifood, Artificial Intelligence and medical devices.

 

The collaboration with the Mobile World Capital Foundation and its program The Collider began in 2019. Given the great potential of the knowledge generated by Catalan universities and research centres, the collaboration contributes to providing the Catalan entrepreneurship ecosystem with the mechanisms and incentives that facilitate the transfer between research and the business world and improve the competitiveness of science-based projects in all Catalan territories.

 

One of the actions developed to support the program is to expand its incubation capacity, which since 2019 has gone from 10 to 15 projects, thanks to the support of the Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement.

 

The collaboration, which will last between 2019 and 2022, has a budget of more than 1 million euros.