16th BioVaria honours SurvivX and QUASAR Therapeutics with Startup Pitch & Partner Awards
Among the GO-Bio initial and ForTra projects, Innovade, Cognisa and Mallia Therapeutics were selected as winners
The international life-science community gathered last week in Munich for the 16th BioVaria, Europe’s leading showcasing event for breakthrough technologies and start-ups in the field. Organized by 13 technology transfer organizations, the event serves as a catalyst for forging partnerships between industry and academia to advance transformative innovations into commercial development.
This year’s event featured 10 highly promising start-ups during the BioVaria Pitch & Partner Program plus a total of 57 commercially and medically attractive technologies arising from top research institutions, universities and university clinics from all over Europe. In addition, BioVaria spotlighted selected early-stage projects supported by the GO-Bio initial and ForTra funding programs.
A highlight was the interactive Startup Pitch & Partner panel where 10 start-ups, five each in the categories ‘rising’ and ‘emerging’, competed to convince a jury of seasoned investors of their ventures’ potential. This year’s winners are SurvivX (rising) and QUASAR Therapeutics (emerging). SurvivX is a Dutch start-up developing a game-changing approach for the treatment of sepsis based on a novel nature-derived protein with outstanding immune stimulating capability. QUASAR Therapeutics is based in Germany and develops innovative regulators of the complement system, a part of the innate immune system whose malfunction is associated with serious diseases. Their rationally engineered protein has a unique, enzyme-like mode of action with superior efficacy, potency and targeting compared to available complement inhibitors. Both winners expressed their gratitude for the opportunities provided by BioVaria.
‘We’re extremely proud to have won the competition in our category. It was a great networking event, very well organized, great venue, and I have met very nice people. I’d definitely recommend it to other start-ups for the next years,’ said Leonie de Best of SurvivX.
Arthur Dopler and Matteo Mohr from QUASAR Therapeutics added: ‘BioVaria 2024 was a great and valuable event for us. It’s the perfect mix of start-ups, investors, industry and academia representing the entire life-science ecosystem. Many thanks to the organizers and sponsors who made this possible.’
Among the GO-Bio initial and ForTra projects, Innovade, Cognisa and Mallia Therapeutics were selected as winners by a jury of technology transfer professionals, due to their excellent pitch performance. It was the first time any of these start-ups had pitched to an international audience of top-tier life-science investors and industry representatives.
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