Catalonia stands out in research and scientific production. However, Barcelona also seeks to stand out as one of the reference cities in scientific transfer and innovation, ensuring that the knowledge generated in laboratories and institutions can be converted into practical applications and solutions that improve patients' lives. A process that requires not only a long maturation period until the idea reaches the market, but also venture capital funds willing to invest to develop these innovative products and therapies.
With the aim of accompanying this process towards commercialization, in recent years a large number of knowledge transfer offices have flourished in universities, institutions and research centers, as well as public aid and even private initiatives so that the cutting-edge science developed in Catalonia can have a direct effect on patients' lives. With this objective, "la Caixa" Foundation created CaixaImpulse a decade ago, an initiative that, in addition to funding, also accompanies these projects to the market with training and mentoring.
During this first decade of activity, the entity has allocated 24.8 million euros to finance these companies in their early stages. These aids have been financed through Criteria Bio Ventures, CriteriaCaixa's venture capital fund focused on biotechnology and health sciences, the foundation's investment arm. Thanks to the profits obtained from the companies in which CriteriaCaixa participates, the Foundation plans to invest up to 4,000 million euros in the next five years in social, educational and cultural actions, among which is the CaixaImpulse program.
In total, these almost 25 million euros distributed over a decade have been used to finance 232 biomedical and technological research projects ---200 of which in Spain, and 32 in Portugal---, with a total of 50 spin-offs created thanks to the program's aid. Practically all of these companies, a total of 46, are still active, and 2 of them have already started commercializing their products. The funded projects cover a wide variety of branches of health sciences, from oncology ---which concentrates most of the initiatives---, to neurosciences, infectious or cardiovascular diseases.
Among the companies created are projects such as the exoskeletons from ABLE Human Motion, the robots used in physical and cognitive rehabilitation processes by Inrobics, or the Innitius medical device capable of early prediction of the possibility of suffering a premature birth. In total, these companies have managed to create 285 jobs and improve the lives of 3,180 patients who have participated in the clinical trials of the different initiatives.
For these companies, CaixaImpulse program funding is key in the early stages of their development. Especially in an ecosystem where, although there are increasingly more specialized venture capital funds, the lack of economic resources still represents one of the major impediments for these spin-offs to overcome the so-called "valley of death," an initial period prior to the commercialization phase that many startups fail to overcome. "These projects require long maturation times and high turnover, so CriteriaCaixa funds represent the first grain of sand for these therapies or medical devices to continue developing and reach the market," defended Pablo Cironi, director of Criteria Bio Ventures.
But, beyond capital, the program is structured around another major axis: mentoring and funding hours. Mentoring focused on accompanying researchers in creating a company, helping them, for example, to study the viability of their project, develop a business plan, or understand the steps to follow. In total, during this first decade of activity, the initiative has provided 5,500 hours of mentoring and 870 hours of training through a network of mentors such as Laura Sampietro-Colom, Deputy Director of Innovation at Hospital Clínic. "Mentors are the co-pilots of the drive: we have the route and the map, but it is the companies that drive and decide on their project," emphasizes the researcher.
"The program was a boost to develop our project and, above all, to understand the basic concepts of entrepreneurship," highlighted Alicia Martínez Piñeiro, CEO of Time is Brain, a spin-off of Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol funded by CaixaImpulse. The company has created BraiN20, a portable medical device that allows real-time monitoring of the brain's state after a stroke, offering key information to assess prognosis and accelerate medical decisions.
For this year, in fact, the entity plans to allocate a budget of five million euros to continue supporting this initiative. However, Àngel Font, deputy general director of Research and Grants at "la Caixa" Foundation, has assured that they have room to increase this budget if the demand for projects requires it. In fact, the budget has been increasing annually since, while in the first years few initiatives were submitted to these calls, in recent years demand has grown substantially. An increase in demand that, according to Font, indicates that more and more researchers are opting to create a spin-off so that their knowledge can go beyond the four walls of the laboratory and offer practical applications to improve patients' lives.