Thursday, June 25, 2009
At the yels.net summer event on 18 June, FarmaScreen was awarded the NGI Venture Challenge 2009. Farmascreen, a company that develops biochips for high throughput tox screening, received a prize of € 25.000.
All too often research findings fail to be translated into new products or services. The NGI Venture Challenge, a combination of a competition and a coaching event, wants to change this. The Challenge is open to Life Sciences researchers who want to turn promising research results into a business. During the pitch, experienced business coaches help the researchers to transform their findings into venture plans. The outcome: a sound business case that allows for a convincing presentation to investment partners and attracts early-stage funding. The Venture Challenge was initiated in 2008.
June 18th the NGI Venture Challenge 2009 was awarded to FarmaScreen. FarmaScreen is an early stage research enterprise that will soon be spun-off from Leiden University. The company will offer a prototype of a patent-pending biochip which can be used as a safety screen in the drug pipeline. It allows automated screening of compounds on zebrafish embryos at medium- to high-throughput. It produces large quantities of high-quality data that can reliably predict a compound's toxicity, at a fraction of the cost of mouse and rat screenings.
The commercial potential of the biochip is high.
The prize of € 25.000 will be used to start up the financing process.