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Iproteos, Award for the Award for the Best Entrepreneur Project in the Biotechnology Sector

By 10 de September de 2011November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 10.09.2011

Iproteos, Award for the Award for the Best Entrepreneur Project in the Biotechnology Sector

The spin-off Iproteos has wined the II Award for the Best Entrepreneur Project in the Biotechnology Sector. This spin-off, that signed a contract license with the University of Barcelona (UB) – managed by the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation (FBG) – and the IRB Barcelona, does research, development and commercialisation of new therapeutics related to cognitive deficits associated to SNC diseases.


The award was given last September 5 in the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, which is a session included in the 34th Congress of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM). This Forum is focused on creating biotech-based start-ups and the success stories of entrepreneurs. It is of particular interest to young researchers and entrepreneurs from the biotechnology and biomedicine sector. The manager of the Licensing Unit of the FBG, Lurdes Jordi, participated in the round table of this Forum entitled “Knowledge Transfer through Licenses or Spin-offs”.

In spite of the many scientific advances made in recent years, the identification of new inexpensive, efficient drugs with low toxicity continues to be one of the challenges for the pharmaceutical industries. The small size of traditional drugs allows them to bind to many cellular components and this often causes side effects. To overcome this problem, the last twenty years has witnessed the development of protein-based drugs – second generation drugs -, including antibodies, which are intensively used in the treatment of several kinds of cancer. Although much more expensive than traditional drugs, protein-based agents have the advantage that their larger size allows greater specificity and produces fewer side effects.

Iproteos will focus on third generation drugs, these based on molecules called peptides, which are at the interface between the drugs used traditionally and proteins. The Catalan biotech enterprise, Specially, will focus its efforts on the search for peptides that block the activity of proteases, key therapeutic targets for the treatment of a wide range of diseases.