cutting-edge technologies such as big Data Or artificial intelligence applied to medicine has the potential to revolutionize how we take care of our health. Proof of this is the exponential growth of companies dedicated to innovation deep technology In the health sector: in 2021 alone, start-up Digital Medicine received approximately $31,000 million in venture capital worldwide (approximately 30,100 million euros), an increase of 68% over the previous year.

In this scenario of glut, investment funds provide a significant boost to the ecosystem. Daniel Oliver, director of Capital Cell, a crowdfunding platform specializing in biomedicine, and a partner at Nara Capital, a new investment firm focused on biotech and medical technology that is preparing to launch a fund that does well knows. With their hands on, and listening to the testimony of entrepreneur Esther Rodriguez Villegas, we explore the past and future of entrepreneurship in healthcare technology deep in the podcast. future constantfeatured by MIT Technology Review In Spanish in collaboration with MAPFRE. You can listen to his interview starting at 23 minutes.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In your opinion, what can professional investors bring? start upBeyond financing, what else would you like to contribute with Nara Capital?

An investment fund, unlike a bank, is always someone who either has a lot of contacts or has very specific knowledge in the very specific areas they want to contribute to the companies. The mission of an investment fund is to make money, but through an activity with a certain impact. In our case, we want to see how companies develop healthcare disruptive technologies that can change the way we go to the doctor, heal the sick, or prevent diseases.

Our mission is to identify technologies and tools that can do this and support them in any way they can. With money, of course, financial resources hinge on the rest; But we can also help them strategically. We have seen the trajectories of many companies and we know how to plan various investment rounds, personnel recruitment, development We are particularly good at clinical development issues, and we do a necessary process. These technologies can be of great help in planning: being able to demonstrate with data that it is indeed capable of improving patients lives, simplifying the process, and saving money.

We want to see how companies develop with disruptive technologies that could change how we go to the doctor or prevent diseases

Nara Capital has so far invested in three projects. Which company profile are you looking for and what market opportunities do you see as most interesting?

We want to focus above all on companies that are at least a few steps ahead of executing projects that are ahead in the market. We want to invest in biotechnology, but also in the next generation of biotechnology: gene therapy, synthetic biology, immunotherapy, etc. Digital drugs are also happening: FDA [Administracin de Alimentos y Medicamentos, la agencia gubernamental de EE. UU. responsable de la regulacin de dispositivos y otros productos mdicos] not long ago have started approving the first digital medical science [terapias digitales],

Lots of start-up that are part of your platform, from the capital sale, are By-product of universities. Based on your experience, what are the challenges you face while entering the market?

to some! They are a special kind of company, an excellent group to start working with. Speaking of the downside, what you usually find is a lack of professional experience, especially if they are in the stage of leaving the research centers. Spain probably still needs to improve a lot in terms of technology transfer, team building and By-product,

Spain probably still needs to improve a lot in terms of technology transfer, team building and spin-offs

You founded Capital Cell in 2015 because you saw its potential start-up Biomedical in Spain. How have you experienced the development of the innovation ecosystem in health in Spain, especially in the region deep technology And how would you rate its current state?

there is a big difference between start-up in higher health technology in 2020 than in 2010. Spain is a country that is far ahead in science: it was the 11th world producer of scientific articles in major publications, and some stood out Hotspot Like Catalonia, which will be the third producer of biomedical sciences per capita in the world. We are one of the worlds mainstays in science, and I hope to remain so for some time, despite one very worrying thing: public investment in R&D has been in free fall for a few years now. .

We have great science. In recent years he has been supplementing himself with two things he lacked: entrepreneurial ability and money. There are already quite a few specialized funds in biomedicine and funds have begun to focus on deep technology more broadly. amount of venture capital available to Biotechnology It has grown manifold in the last 5 years.

At the entrepreneurial level, entrepreneurship is an ecosystem: once the first company is formed, it is like a pollination cycle. There are about five or six people in that company, who succeed or fail, but in any case they accumulate experience. If all went well, he left and found five or six companies, or entered as directors, or devoted himself to investing the wheel of talent and entrepreneurship in high technology in Spain. is holding.

In recent years, Spanish science has been complemented by a lack of two things: entrepreneurial potential and money

As an expert, what technological trends or innovations do you think will mark the health sector in the coming years and what key challenges will be addressed?

They pass through two categories: those that will come from technological progress and those that come from socioeconomic needs. In the second case, they are clear: We are approaching a saturation point in the health system. We have an aging population and have difficulties supporting it financially. From there will trends such as the development of personalized and preventive medicine; In other words: as the system has to take care of many more people who live with chronic diseases for more years, the need will arise to prevent problems from appearing and thus maintain treatment for 30 or 40 years. will not be required.

It will focus a lot on early diagnosis, so the projects were looking at to detect tumors 10 or 12 years before they occur, detect genetic predisposition to diabetes, respiratory diseases all technologies Those who are able to avoid it a disease appears is a future trend.

All technologies that are able to prevent a disease from appearing are a trend for the future

There are also trends derived from the fact that there are clearly emerging amazing technologies, such as quantum computing, that could help computers more efficiently design drugs, among other things. This would take an already very obvious trend to a new level, the use of artificial intelligence, particularly applied to medical imaging.

At the biological level, there are many applications that stem from genomics. The fact that we are now able to sequence the entire genome of any individual is also one of the great changes in medicine. There is one trend that particularly fascinates me, which is synthetic biology, that is, creating or modifying living things. This has great ethical implications, but also a lot of opportunities, not only in medicine: the design of organisms that are capable of absorbing oil for oil fragments, bacteria that are more effective at reforestation although we can probably use 10 Or are 20 years away from being able to do anything with living things.

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"Technologies That Prevent A Disease From Appearing Will Be A Trend" - Nation World News

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