Medicen Paris Region and BioWin launch cross-membership

Paris, France and Gosselies, Belgium, July 2, 2019 – Medicen Paris Region (Greater Paris) and BioWin (Walloon region), two of Europe’s leading health innovation competitiveness clusters, today announce their unique partnership, offering cross-membership to their affiliates: Medicen members can benefit from a 50% discount on BioWin membership fees and vice versa.

Since 2015, Medicen and BioWin have worked together to bring their ecosystems closer by organizing joint events and connecting members. The clusters share international ambitions and strategic priorities. Signing this agreement shows their willingness to strengthen European competitiveness in health innovation.

Organizations subscribing to this cross-membership will benefit from access to members of both ecosystems, support for collaborative R&D projects as well as counsel on best financing options. Several members of both clusters are well-known at a European level for their excellence, both in clinical research (AP-HP, Institut Jules Bordet) and in industrial production of innovative therapeutic solutions (Baxter, Microsoft, GSK, Sanofi and others).

Six members (three French and three Belgian affiliates) have already subscribed to this cross-membership, including the Belgian subsidiary of US company Baxter, which sees this agreement as an opportunity to access a new market as well as new partners. Others already benefiting from the new scheme include Oncodesign, Valotec, HalioDx, Delphi Genetics and DNAlytics.

“This partnership is a new step in the process of partnering our academic, entrepreneurial and industrial ecosystems,” said Stéphane Roques, CEO of Medicen Paris Region. “With the cross-membership scheme, we can aggregate members’ expertise and needs in order to promote the European champions of the medicine of tomorrow.”

“This cross-affiliation agreement between two competitiveness clusters is unique in Europe. It makes perfect sense since the Medicen and BioWin ecosystems complement each other,” said Sylvie Ponchaut, managing director of BioWin. “By increasing our critical mass, we are strengthening our competitiveness for the benefit of our members, who will find new research and business opportunities.”

The latest example of the two clusters’ collaboration activities included an event in Paris dedicated to artificial intelligence (July 2): Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Digital Simulation in Health. (FR)

About BioWin

Founded in 2006, the Wallonia, Belgium-based health cluster is the region’s key player for all stakeholders in innovative R&D projects and/or skills development in the field of health biotechnology and medical technology (business, research centers and universities). The cluster has undertaken numerous initiatives to promote Wallonia’s scientific and industrial excellence on the international stage. As of 2018, BioWin has 234 members, including eight major corporations (Baxter/Baxalta, GSK, IBA, IRE, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Kaneka Eurogentec, UCB et Zoetis), 31 medium-sized and 154 small companies, as well as five research centers, five universities, 15 technical colleges and training centers and 16 foundations, VCs, funds and incubators. Members are active in a number of fields: (bio)pharma, cell therapy, radiopharmaceutical applications, medical devices and diagnostics (in vitro and in vivo), bioproduction and data science. Biowin has accredited a portfolio of 47 R&D projects, which received a total of €144M ($162M) in funding, including €113M ($127M) in grants from the Walloon region.

www.biowin.org

About Medicen Paris Region

Medicen Paris Region is a competitiveness cluster for innovative health technologies, with national and international scope. It has more than 450 startups, companies, research centers, universities, hospitals and local authorities as members. It focuses on five strategic areas and on combined therapeutic solutions that will mix several of these areas with precision medicine: biological diagnostics, diagnostic and interventional imaging, biotherapies, digital health and the development of techno-therapies. In close collaboration with local, regional and national healthcare innovation players, Medicen Paris Region aims to:

• Foster the emergence, development and funding of collaborative or individual projects in the healthcare sector
• Increase the international development of innovative startups and SMEs and support them in their international expansion
• Strengthen the attractiveness of the Greater Paris region, which represents more than 50% of life sciences activity in France

Since the creation of the competitiveness cluster in 2005, 80 innovative products and 335 projects were certified. They received funding from the French government (French Inter-Ministry Fund FUI, Structuring Projects fund for Competitiveness), 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 Greater Paris region. Total investment is close to €1.9 billion ($2.2bn) and €708 million ($803M) of public aid.

www.medicen.org