Biomedicine on the catwalk

by Oleg Nikishenkov at 05/04/2012

The Moscow News

Moscow hosted a fashion show of sorts this week, but instead of models decked out in the latest lines from Versace or Dolce and Gabbana, it was biomedical entrepreneurs who were on the catwalk, putting their start-ups before venture investors.

Connecting enterprises with business angels was exactly the purpose of the “start-up parade,” said Oleg Alexeyev, head of research and education at the Skolkovo foundation, but for those at a more developed stage, establishing direct links with industry representatives also lay behind it.

Biomedical innovations

The broader context of the parade was the first international Innovations in Medical Technology conference, which was held Monday and Tuesday under Skolkovo’s auspices. It focused on the use of biomedical innovations not simply to help diversify the Russian economy, but also to channel the country’s wealth of scientific knowledge into solving its problems in social development and health. It brought entrepreneurs, investors, company representatives and government officials under one roof to discuss how education, research and investment could benefit both the industry and quality of life in Russia.

Part of Alexeyev’s role at Skolkovo is advocacy for new Russian biomedical companies on the global market. Russia has a lot to contribute to development of technologies, he said, but new start-ups can often be stifled by the domination of multinational heavyweights.

“So when we talk about innovations in biomedicine, does it mean serving the technological needs of the market leaders?” he said.

Good potential

Esther Dyson is a venture investor who is well known in Russia

Esther Dyson, a venture investor well known in Russia, is among the top 50 investors in the world in information technology, but has recently shifted her focus to ventures in genetics and cancer treatment in the United States. She made her own presentation at the event, illustrating the good potential she sees for investment in Russia.

“I think Russia has a lot of talent and good science in this area, and worldwide health is a booming problem, which means opportunity,” she told The Moscow News.

Dyson’s interest in Russian ventures, however, is focused on services, tools and remedies for the Russian market, rather than exports, though she considers both “valid strategies” for business development.

Need to expand

Deputy Health and Social Development Minister Veronika Skvortsova agreed with Dyson that Russia has a strong foundation in biomedicine. In her address to the conference, she described how health authorities envision the development of the government’s strategy for the biomedical industry, to be based on specific platforms to tackle types of pathologies: reproductive, neurological, intercellular, and vascular, among others. Russia is good at researching infectious diseases, Skvortsova said, but needs to make improvements elsewhere.

“We know for sure what technologies and competencies are missing in Russia, so we have to either import them or develop our own,” Skvortsova said. To foster development, the government plans to create a national biomedical intellectual property foundation to help maintain Russian patents in the face of international competition, she said. Dyson described the start-ups she saw at the parade as still in the early stages.

Wide variety

“I’d say one company deserved 4.5 points out of five, while many of them were two to eight points out of 10 – and it’s impossible to know whether they are closer to two or eight without further analysis,” she said.

To Dyson’s mind, some of these firms were very ambitious. If their technologies and products prove useful, she said they should be able to find both money and business experts to help them develop.

Government support for one such advance, the drug Triazavirin, became evident on the conference’s final day, though not at the conference itself. President Dmitry Medvedev asked Skolkovo to present a grant of 149 million rubles ($5 million) to the Yekaterinburg pharmacological cluster to complete implementation of the new treatment, which has been found to cure swine flu or avian flu at any stage of the disease.

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