Photo: Espen Snipstad, LMI

“We had between 20 and 30 meetings over the two days of the Nordic Life Science Days 2018 conference. Here, you receive valuable feedback and have the opportunity to market projects and follow up ongoing negotiations. It’s an important arena for establishing contact with international companies,” says Kristin Sandereid.

Sandereid is Executive Fund & Business Manager at Inven2 and attends many international conferences each year.

A stand to present Norwegian life sciences

At the Nordic Life Science conference, Norwegian players in the field of life sciences joined forces on a stand in the exhibition area that presented the breadth of the Norwegian research and development environment.

“It’s important that Norwegian players pull together and form alliances in relation to players from outside the country. We’re a small country, but as a combined force, we are perceived as an important player in the field,” says Sandereid.

The stand was sponsored by Innovation Norway and the Research Council of Norway, and also received funding from the Norwegian embassy in Sweden, which is very involved in promoting the field.

The other people cooperating on the stand were representatives from Oslo Cancer Cluster, UiO:Life Science, Norway Health Tech, Aleap, Norwegian Inflammation Network, The Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Norway, Centre for Digital Life Norway, The Life Science Cluster and Nansen Neuroscience.

Other conferences

Inven2 regularly participates in a number of other conferences each year, where it makes active partnering efforts on behalf of researchers and companies in the portfolio.

“We regularly attend BIO Spring in Europa, BIO in the USA and Biofit in France, and also take part in numerous subject-specific conferences that cover topics such as CRISPR, immunotherapy to treat cancer, microbiota and more”, says Sandereid.

The purpose of attending the more specialised conferences is to learn about new markets, international R&D developments in the field, and, not least, networking.

Read more:

Nordic Life Science Days: www.nlsdays.com

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Foto: Jannicke Kristoffersen, Inven2

SPARK Norway is an innovation programme for researchers who work on health-related topics in the life sciences and who want to further develop innovative ideas from their own research. Its goal it to get more innovation out of basic research.

SPARK Norway was officially opened in February 2018 at UiO’s annual Oslo Life Science Conference. The year has seen both open and closed meetings for researchers in SPARK Norway and others who wish to learn more about the commercialisation of research.

UiO:Life Science, Inven2 and the Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Norway also organised a separate evening meeting during the event Arendalsuka in order to disseminate information about the programme. Minister of Trade and Industry Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, several secretaries of state and the rectorates of the University of Oslo, the University of Bergen, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) also attended and expressed great enthusiasm and support for the initiative.

Much to be gained as a SPARKee

Researchers at UiO and research groups at Oslo University Hospital (OUS) or Akershus University Hospital (Ahus) that are affiliated to UiO can apply to UiO:Life Science to be admitted to the programme.

There are many advantages to be gained from taking part in the programme. The SPARKees, as they are known, receive mentoring, milestone-based funding, guidance, and training in research commercialisation.

See the overview of the 11 SPARK teams at the end of the article.

The first five teams were chosen from Inven2’s portfolio, so that those administering the programme would be able to gain a better understanding of what type of projects were suited to the SPARK programme. One of these teams was the Idépris winners from 2017, Jonas Skogestad and Magnus Aronsen, who are working on a brand new treatment method for arrhythmia and cardiac arrest.

Inven2 has also written an article about another SPARK team: Henriette Andresen and Lise Román Moltzau, who are developing a new method for treating high blood pressure in patients where existing treatments are not effective.

SPARK Norway will have annual calls for applications. The most recent deadline for applications was 15 November 2018.

Based on a prestigious programme

SPARK Norway is based on Stanford SPARK, which started in 2006. It is a programme that has a strong reputation for taking research from one of the world’s most recognised universities all the way to benefitting patients and society at large.

UiO:Life Science is behind the programme at UiO. They are supported by a management team of representatives from UiO, Inven2, OUS and the clusters Oslo Cancer Cluster, the Life Science Cluster, Nansen Neuroscience Network, Norwegian Inflammation Network and Norway Health Tech, as well as the Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Norway (LMI) and the Norwegian Medicines Agency.

“It is very important to us to work closely with the clusters and networks. Among other things, it means that we can obtain the best mentors for our participants from a big network,” says Morten Egeberg. He is head of administration at UiO:Life Science and head of SPARK Norway.

The SPARK teams:

• RACeR: Improvement of A Genetic Tool that Enhances Homology Dependent Gene Repair
  Project leader: Adam Robertson, OUS
  Team members: Caroline Køster, Deo Pandey, Terezia Prikrylova, Rune Forstrøm and Arne Klungland
  Watch Robertson´s presentation at the SPARK Norway kick-off 13 February
  2018
• Petomics: a commercial Norwegian microbiome service for performance animals and pets
  Project leader: Pål Trosvik, UiO
  Team member: Eric Jacques de Muinck
• Influenza vaccine that can be rapidly produced to counter an emerging pandemic threat
  Project leader: Gunnveig Grødeland, UiO
  Team member: Bjarne Bogen
  Watch Grødeland´s presentation at the main event of Oslo Life Science 2018
  
• Targeted pharmacological treatment of ventricular arrhythmias
  Project leader: Magnus Aronsen, UiO
  Team member: Jonas Skogestad
  Watch Skogestad´s presentation at the SPARK Norway kick-off 13 February 2018
• Healthy soils for a healthy life
  Project leader: Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, UiO
  Team members: The research group MORPHOPLEX
  Watch Shalchian-Tabrizi´s presentation at the SPARK Norway kick-off 13 February 2018
• A novel strategy to tailor the pharmacokinetics of IgA antibodies
  Project leader: Simone Mester, Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, UiO
  Team members: Inger Sandlie (UiO) and Jan Terje Andersen (OUS)
  Watch Mester´s presentation at the SPARK Norway kick-off 13 February 2018
• Tankyrase inhibition in cancer immune therapy
  Project leader: Jo Waaler, Faculty of Medicine, UiO
  Team member: Stefan Krauss, (UiO and OUS)
• Novel therapy for currently untreatable hypertension
  Project leader: Henriette Andresen, Department of Pharmacology and Institute for Experimental Medical Research, Institute of Clinical Medicine, UiO
  Team members: Lise Román Moltzau (UiO) Finn Olav Levy (UiO) and Alessandro Cataliotti (UiO)
  Watch Andresen´s presentation at the SPARK Norway kick-off 13 February 2018
• Restoration of a functional urinary bladder using cutting-edge technology
  Project leader: Jean-Luc Boulland, Norwegian Center for Stem Cell Research, UiO/OUS
  Team members: Mark Züchner (OUS), Henning Andreas Haga (NMBU), Andreas Lervik (NMBU), Vanessa Bettembourg (NMBU), Joel Glover (UiO) and Ole-Jakob Nilsen (OUS)
• Novel therapy for ischemic reperfusion injury
  Project leader: Ana Isabel Costa Calejo, Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM), Faculty of Medicine, UiO
  Team members: Kjetil Tasken (UiO/OUS), Jo Klaveness (UiO), Ivar Sjaastad (OUS), Magnus Aronsen (UiO/OUS), Mohammed Amarzguioui (Inven2) and Kristin Sandereid (Inven2)
  Watch Calejo´s presentation at the SPARK Norway kick-off 13 February 2018
• IVF Fit^TM: Optimising in vitro fertilisation hormone dosage
  Project leader: Ana Lobato-Pascual, Reproductive Medicine Department, OUS
  Team members: Péter Fedorcsák (OUS and UiO), Mei Ling Lim (Karoliska Institutet), Vidar Ulset (start-up entrepreneur) and Krister Andersson (UiO)

Read more:

SPARK Norway’s website

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Photo: Jannicke Kristoffersen, Inven2

Inven2Start is an annual competition for students with a good idea and a sense of entrepreneurship. The purpose of the competition is to encourage entrepreneurship and business start-ups stemming from the ideas of skilled students.

This year, there were five winners who all received the ‘Start-up package’ comprising:

• NOK 60,000 in capital to found a company
• Help to further develop a business model
• Accounting help
• Legal advice
• Help to search for relevant ideas

The idea is that this support will provide the help the students need in the start-up phase of their business, to get it up and running. This was what, for example, Meshcrafts received for their start up in 2013 when they won Inven2Start. Today, the company delivers power management to private electric car owners, commercial properties, housing cooperatives and Norwegian municipalities, and is about to enter the international market.

Read more about Meshcrafts here.

From DNA to sustainable clothing consumption

The students’ ideas demonstrate a diversity of ideas in very different industries, which is an important aspect of this competition.

Read more about the five winning ideas here:

QuickCYP
– A platform for quick detection of DNA for clinics and hospitals

Motion Industry
– A drone and data company that will deliver services for industry and agriculture purposes

Stilyagi
– A creative forum for redesign of clothing that functions by spreading knowledge of sewing and sustainability through workshops, courses and inspiring arenas

WorkFlow
– Corporate yoga, mindfulness and mental training for stress reduction and improved performance

Gardenrent
– A marketplace where people who enjoy gardening can be paired with unused private gardens

Facts:

• Inven2Start is organised by Inven2 in cooperation with Start: the student organisation for innovation and entrepreneurship and a number of other stakeholders, such as the Norwegian Industrial Property Office, PWC, BI Norwegian Business School and CLP
• Read more on Inven2Start’s website

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Anne Marie Bjørgo and Helle Thorsen of Inven2 and Kristin Jørstad of NTNU Technology Transfer have been prime movers for the FORNY project Legal focus group. In 2018, they organised three national gatherings to raise competence among the employees of TTOs in various fields:

• Public funding and innovative procurements
• Intellectual Property Rights when founding a business
• Legal issues relating to health data, artificial intelligence and big data

“We see every day that there is a need for competence raising in law among all employees. That is why we initiated this national project. To put it another way, things can quickly get expensive if the legal aspects of a case are not right,” says Helle Thorsen, lawyer at Inven2.

Practical gatherings

Thorsen, Bjørgo and Jørstad are all lawyers and have long experience of corporate law and research-based industry. Together, they have developed work packages on the three topics that have been very practical and project oriented.

The TTOs in Norway, for example, will see a major increase in the number of projects in health data and at the intersection between big data and artificial intelligence going forward.

“These are research fields where Norway has an advantage because of our health registers and unique biobanks. It is therefore important that we are at the forefront and that we build the necessary internal competence in the TTOs,” says Bjørgo.

Read the article about the meeting here (in Norwegian).

Continuation in the cards

Thorsen and Bjørgo say that the participants at the seminars have given excellent feedback.

“The participants report that this is important competence raising. We managed to establish a good atmosphere at all the gatherings and have formed the basis for important discussions about the issues the project managers encounter in their work,” says Bjørgo.

“We want to continue this work going forward and hope to see new opportunities for applying for FORNY funding for further initiatives. Since more TTOs are being established at the new universities, there will also be more demand for legal competence,” says Thorsen.

Bjørgo points out that there are few seminars and conferences that sufficiently address legal challenges among TTOs.

“In many ways, a TTO operates within a very narrow field and there are few conferences that can contribute to relevant competence-raising for TTO employees. It has therefore been useful and not least important to work on these legal seminars on the different topics,” say Bjørgo and Thorsen.

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Photo: Jannicke Kristoffersen, Inven2

Computers constitute an enormous security risk. It is as Ijlal Loutfi says when pitching the idea that has been awarded Idéprisen 2018:

“There are two types of people in the world: Those who have been hacked and those who do not know that they have been hacked.”

In an intense competition with two other finalists whose projects were to develop a cancer treatment and a special ECG meter aimed at athletes, respectively, Loutfi emerged as the winner.

Set to develop a smartcard

Loutfi is a PhD candidate and part of the Networks & Distributed systems group (ND) at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. She describes the need for a smartcard solution that can protect the data of business employees and the state, using the following example:

“The operating system (OS) of a computer is particularly sensitive to hacking, and having a separate login for your internet banking does not help since it can be reached by unauthorised persons through a hacked OS,” says Loutfi.

Her solution is exemplified in the following scenario: Businessman Olav is employed in a company that needs him to travel to countries where people want access to his data or, even worse, that hide in the computer so that they can monitor him and the work he does.

“The solution is that the IT department where he works equips Olav with a smartcard when he is going on business trips. The smartcard contains a location sensor and encrypted keys that enable him to safely connect to the business’s server. This means that he can take a completely clean OS with him on trips,” explains Loutfi.

Important source of new innovation

Inven2’s Ideṕrisen is an annual initiative intended to increase the number of ideas stemming from the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital.

“In addition to the financial prize of NOK 250,000, which is of course important, it is perhaps even more valuable to the winner that Inven2 also contributes competence and a network that takes the idea closer to the market,” says CEO of Inven2 Ole Kristian Hjelstue.

Read more about the Idéprisen here.

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Photo: Jannicke Kristoffersen, Inven2

The purpose of Inven2Pitch is to present potential opportunities for investors, as well as for entrepreneurs searching for exciting projects they can further develop into vibrant companies.

“What the projects have in common is their need for entrepreneurs and funding when they are ready to proceed to the commercial phase in just a short time,” says Ole Kristian Hjelstuen, CEO of Inven2. 

Health and cancer

Two Inven2Pitch meetings were held in 2018. In March, ten health projects in the early stages were presented by either Inven2’s project managers or the researchers behind the projects.

The event was held in the health incubator Aleap in the Oslo Science Park, and more than

70 attendants received information about the projects stemming from outstanding health research at the University of Oslo and the hospitals under the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority.

In June, more than 60 people came to the Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator to hear presentations given by eight promising cancer projects. A large share of the attendants were experienced investors in other cancer companies.

“I am pleasantly surprised that so many established investors from the industry came to the pitching. Many of the projects are related to immunotherapy or represent entirely new cancer treatment methods,” says Hjelstuen.

Norway has a strong tradition in world-class cancer research. Companies like Algeta, Nordic Nanovector, Ultimovacs and Zelluna Immunotherapy have been founded on the basis of this state-of-the-art research.

“Pitching has proven to be a good way of disseminating information about developments in our portfolio. I firmly believe that it will now be easier to obtain funding for these projects after these two rounds of successful pitching,” says Hjelstuen.

The health projects presented at Inven2Pitch:

• Pacertool | A new platform for pacemaker implants based on patient-specific responses
• AKAP18 | Novel therapy for preventing secondary damage in connection with stenting of heart attack patients
• Dronebud AS | Drone deliveries of biological matter between hospitals in the Oslo area
• Ambulansebåre | Lighter and more flexible motorised ambulance stretchers with tilt function
• Catalysts Technologies AS | Catalysts’s digital platform strengthens the work on creating a more inclusive society, one relationship at a time
• Petomics | Mapping pets’ microbiota – a technical and analytical service
• ZinChel | Prohibits antibiotic resistance 
• TSD | Secure storage of sensitive personal data
• DinQ | A new antibiotic 
• Coeliac disease | Blood-test based test that can determine coeliac disease without a previous gluten diet, reducing the number of unnecessary endoscopies

The cancer projects presented at Inven2Pitch:

• Tankyrase inhibition in cancer therapy
• A new drug against Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML)
• Autologous anti-CD20 TCR-engineered T-cell therapy for recurrent Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
• Lymphocyte Booster – Lymphocyte boosting growth medium for Adoptive Cell Therapy
• CD37 CAR for cancer immunotherapy
• IL-15 Immunotherapy – Fusion protein for immunotherapy of solid tumours
• Backscatter: A communication technology enabling colon-cancer screening

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