More than 50 Dutch companies will visit BIO Convention Boston 2023 this week, one of the most important conferences in the world in the field of biotechnology. It is an annual conference with more than 5,000 companies that are all active in the field of Life Science, Research and Development. An interesting area for these companies, says Sandra Eikhout, Market Director TNO Healthy Living & Work.
‘These companies are looking for substances that can help cure diseases,’ says Eikhout. These substances should eventually end up in the medicines that will be available in pharmacies. A long process that can take twelve years. ‘We help to speed up the process.’
Networking
By accelerating the R&D process of companies, medicines can reach the market earlier, says TNO. However, the trade mission, which also includes Minister Micky Adriaansens of Economic Affairs and Climate and Minister Ernst Kuipers of Health, Welfare and Sport, is also primarily a networking event, says Eikhout. ‘We will visit various companies here. But of course we will also network with each other, because among these 50 companies there are also customers of ours.’
Eikhout therefore does not expect to bring concrete deals or innovations from Boston back to Leiden. ‘For us it is mainly about looking for companies that want to work with us. We are not directly involved in the deal making at the end, but mainly look at companies that are interested in working with us.’
Artificial intelligence
Central to the fair is, among other things, the emergence of artificial intelligence in healthcare. ‘We call that Digital Health’, says Eikhout. ‘We are going to see what artificial intelligence can mean for the development process (of medicines, ed.). More and more companies are working on that.’
TNO itself has designed the automatic mass spectrometer TNO in this area. ‘This allows us to measure the effects in humans at a very early stage,’ says Eikhout. ‘In this way we can quickly determine whether a medicine is effective and whether harmful side effects can occur. A unique method.’
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