Medicen Paris Region strengthens its European position in regenerative medicine

Paris, July 19, 2017 – Medicen Paris Region, Europe’s leading healthcare cluster, today announces the launch of the European BONE project. Medicen is a partner in the project, which aims to develop innovative bone implants over the next four years. The launch was made official on July 6 in Paris prior to the REGMED Europe event, a major international initiative bringing together eight leading European clusters and ecosystems in the regenerative medicine sector, as well as international support structures and the Enterprise Europe Network.

Regenerative medicine aims to repair injuries or diseased organs using biomaterials, gene therapy, cell therapy and tissue engineering. REGMED Europe brought together for one day close to 30 eminent speakers and 150 participants from 15 different countries (Europe and Canada):

• A morning providing information on the main challenges facing the sector at the European level (regulation, bioproduction, market access and reimbursement), the parties present in the Paris area and France as a whole and the major ecosystems in Europe (Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and the UK); illustrated by several pitches from businesses and academic players
• A networking afternoon with almost 250 individual meetings scheduled in advance via a b2match platform dedicated to the event

On this occasion, Medicen Paris Region welcomed the transnational consortium of the European BONE project, which was launched on July 6 in the cluster’s offices. Over the next four years, the primary objective of this project, coordinated by Maastricht University (NL), will be to develop innovative bone implants using electrospinning. These implants will become an alternative to repeat surgeries, prolonged medication use and donor tissue implementation following complex bone fractures.

The BONE project will create fifteen jobs and two new products. It will foster close collaboration between the multiple economic regions in north-western Europe. The European consortium includes the universities of Maastricht (NL), Leuven (Belgium) and Lille (France), the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen (Germany), technology companies The Electrospinning Company (UK), NKT Photonics (Denmark), and Spraybase® (Ireland), as well as Medicen Paris Region, acting as a reference biocluster in Europe.

Medicen Paris Region will be responsible for activities relating to the dissemination and long-term impact of the project, as well as monitoring and matchmaking. The cluster will benefit from €162,000 ($185,000) in funding (€97,000 or $110,000 in subsidies), spread over the four years of the project to March 2021.

The BONE project as a whole is funded by the Interreg North-West Europe Program over four years (2017–2021) with a total budget of €3.3 million ($3.8M). INTERREG NWE encourages transnational cooperation between local and national authorities within north-western Europe, focusing on three priorities, one being innovation. It receives financial support from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

“We are thrilled by how successful this first event has been and that we are able to position the cluster and, more generally, the Ile-de-France region, in such an international context. Regenerative medicine is one of our five strategic activities; it is important to position each one at the European level,” said Béatrice Falise-Mirat, CEO of Medicen Paris Region. “It’s also a wonderful example of inter-cluster collaboration within France and internationally and of the added value that clusters can provide for European ecosystems.”

About Medicen Paris Region

Medicen Paris Region is a competitiveness cluster for innovative health technologies, with national and international scope. With more than 300 companies, research centers, universities, hospitals and local authorities as members, it aims to position the Paris region as Europe’s leading healthcare cluster. It focuses on five strategic areas: biological diagnostics, diagnostic and interventional imaging, regenerative medicine and biomaterials, digital health and translational medicine. In close collaboration with local, regional and national healthcare innovation players, Medicen Paris Region aims to:

• Foster the emergence, development and funding of certified collaborative projects in the healthcare sector, in order to create economic value and jobs
• Increase the international development of innovative startups and SMEs
• Strengthen the attractiveness of the Paris region, which represents more than 50% of life sciences activity in France

Since the creation of the cluster in 2005, 62 innovative products have been launched in the imaging, medical devices and biological tools sectors. The cluster has certified 292 projects. They received funding from the French government (French Inter-Ministry Fund FUI, Structuring Projects fund), the public investment bank Bpifrance, the National Research Agency, the European Regional Development Fund, the Investments for the Future program and/or local authorities, and the Paris region. Total investment is close to €1.9 billion and €533 million of public aid.

www.medicen.org