DTU has entered into an agreement with the Bioinnovation Institute to establish research groups in a new growth and funding environment for biotech spin-outs.
DTU has entered into a framework agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Bioinnovation Institute (BII) on the establishment of research projects in a new attractive research and development environment to be known as BII Faculty. The research community offers new funding opportunities for researchers to develop their projects into new spin-outs.
“The initiative is aligned with DTU’s ambition of promoting the development of life science spin-outs. Through the establishment of research groups in the new environment, the researchers will become part of an excellent research environment with attractive opportunities for funding, innovation, and industrial cooperation. We look forward to this ultimately resulting in successful biotech and medtech spin-outs,” says Marianne Thellersen, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at DTU.
Under the framework agreement, the first two projects from DTU will be established at BII as early as January 2020. The projects are currently part of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at DTU and are headed by Professor Morten Sommer and Professor Jay Keasling. The two projects will be granted 6 million DKK each in 2020, and BII is obliged to support the projects up until the end of 2022. The funding will be paid out to DTU, which will employ the groups that will be working at BII.
“The agreement is key to the success of these projects at attracting investors to finance potential spin-outs, so we’re extremely pleased with the excellent cooperation we’ve established with DTU around these projects, and we’re hoping that more universities will follow suit and allow us to take more projects on board and more members of BII Faculty,” says Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII.
In the long term, the BII Faculty projects can grow and become part of BII ́s Creation House programme, which offers convertible loans of up to DKK 10 million, mainly for pharmaceutical projects and companies. With the new agreement, BII will also be able to focus on creating spin-outs within the medtech and industrial biotech fields, thereby paving the way for the development of solutions that can be used in sustainable food production, or medtech solutions designed to help reduce health care costs.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allocated an additional 73 million DKK to BII earmarked for establishing the new innovation environment with five to six projects in 2020 and for welcoming more companies to Creation House.