BOB Phase 1 - Best Business Ideas

BOB - Phase 1 honours researchers for innovative ideas. The top three life sciences business ideas were awarded in the first phase of the international business plan competition Best of Biotech. Scientists and students from 15 countries showed their entrepreneurial skills focusing on life sciences and presented their business ideas.

Fifty-four innovative business ideas with economic potential were submitted in the sixth round of Best of Biotech. The Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth funded this startup initiative to stimulate future-oriented ideas for successfully turning research results into economic assets and to the strengthen Austria as a location for research and industry to make it attractive for the pharmaceutical industry. BOB is run by Life Science Austria (LISA) a programme administered by Austra Wirtschafts Servce (aws).

The top three business ideas were awarded the interim award of the two-stage contest with cash prizes:

Genequine Biotherapeutics: Kilian Guse, a researcher from Finland, focuses on the development of innovative biotech drugs for diseases in animals with significant unmet medical needs. Genequine’s lead product is a gene therapy for the treatment of paralysis caused by osteoarthritis in horses. This is a market of significant size, which presents a great need for effective therapy.

SIMCharacters: The Vienna SIMCharacters team are Jens-Christian Schwindt (neonatal intensive care), Christoph Kunzmann (design and animatronics) and Michael Hoffman (financials). They explore a new direction in the development of extremely small patient simulators, combining medical know-how, realistic anatomy and modern animation technology with high technology to save lives.

Vira Therapeutics: The Innsbruck researchers Dorothee von Laer, Lisa Egerer and Sabrina Marozin develop innovative therapeutics for the treatment of viral cancer patients who fail to respond to conventional therapies.

In the second phase, the best business plans will be awarded. The numerous innovations from previous BOBs have resulted in € 211,500 of prize money and 52 start-up companies. The best ideas win attractive cash prizes to the total amount of € 44,500, sponsored by Boehringer- Ingelheim and AFFiRiS.
The special prize for the best medical technology business plan is donated for the second time this year by the cluster initiative LISAvienna.

Money & Milestones
FemPower 2012
names three winners and twelve awards (June 2012)
FemPower Call 2012 of ZIT supports projects that are headed by women and/or contribute substantially to the
implementation of women and/or in which gender mainstreaming plays a key role. Winners and awardees within the Life
Science are: AFFiRiS, Apeiron, EUCODIS Bioscience, Haplogen, Nabriva, Profem and Sanja Selak.

Savira signs collaboration and licence agreement with Roche worth € 240 million to develop small-molecule polymerase
inhibitors for the treatment of influenza virus infections. (June 2012)

Nabriva Therapeutics and Forest Laboratories sign $ 25 million agreement (June 2012)

Intercell completes equity private placement of € 15.2 million and a financing transaction consisting of a € 20 million
secured loan provided by BB Biotech. (May 2012)

Miracor receives $ 3.5 million cash infusion by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (“FFG”) to begin pivotal clinical
“RAMSES” trial of its PICSO® system. (February 2012)

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