Innov’up Leader PIA #2: Medicen Paris Region supports three out of seven healthcare category winners

Paris, March 19, 2019 – Medicen Paris Region, Europe’s leading health competitiveness cluster, today announces that it has supported three of the seven healthcare category winners of the second edition of the Innov’up Leader PIA Call for Proposals, a program similar to the French government’s Innovation Challenge Program.

Run by Bpifrance, Innov’up Leader PIA is the regional version of the PIA (Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir – Investments for the Future Programme). This call for proposals aims to support ambitious projects related to the innovation priorities of the Greater Paris Region. The projects are co-financed equally by the French government and the Greater Paris Region. These two organizations each granted €100,000 to €500,000 ($113K-$567K) to the competing companies, each with a total project amount between €200,000 and €1M ($227K-$1.13M).

Innov’up Leader PIA was created to accelerate the emergence of future market leaders with potential for a national or even international reach, which could spearhead breakthrough innovation projects. The call for proposals was open to SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) and ETI (intermediate-sized enterprises) located in the Greater Paris region who wanted to achieve growth by funding their development projects.

Medicen assessed and certified three SMEs in order to accelerate their growth and facilitate their financing by the French government bank Bpifrance and the Greater Paris Region:

• BioPearl technology from Cyprio – received €320,000 ($363K) to scale up extracorporeal bioartificial liver models, based on new 3D cellular models of frozen human liver for clinical applications

• MS2 project from Lixoft – received €241,500 ($274K) to develop a new generation of software modelling and simulation technologies to further understand the individualized effects of treatments and to improve the design of next-generation clinical trials

• CAMP 4 project from Basecamp Vascular – awarded €385,500 ($437K) to develop an active catheter device that combines electronics and precision mechanics to improve the treatment of strokes

“Medicen Paris Region offers personalized support to its members and to project leaders in order to accelerate their growth and internationalization,” said Stéphane Roques, general manager of the Medicen Paris Region competitiveness cluster. “The latest results, at a regional, national or European level, confirm our ambitions to support innovative projects with strong potential for the Greater Paris ecosystem.”

The winners received their prizes at a ceremony held on February 22 at the Greater Paris Regional Council headquarters, in the presence of Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region.

The deadlines for the next four Innov’up Leader PIA 2019-2020 call for proposals have been announced (May 10 and September 27, 2019, January 31 and May 15, 2020). The Medicen Paris Region competitiveness cluster will continue to help its members prepare for these calls for projects.

About Medicen Paris Region

Medicen Paris Region is a competitiveness cluster for innovative health technologies with national and international scope. With more than 400 startups, companies, research centers, universities, hospitals and local authorities as members, it aims to position the Paris region as Europe’s leading healthcare competitiveness cluster. 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 (treatment via technologies, such as connected implants or artificial organs).

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, in order to create economic value and jobs
• Increase the economic development of innovative startups and SMEs and support them in their international expansion
• Strengthen the attractiveness of the Greater Paris region, animate and catalyse the ecosystem, which represents more than 50% of R&D in the French health sector

Since the creation of the competitiveness cluster in 2005, 80 innovative products have been launched in the imaging, medical devices and biological tools sectors. The competitiveness cluster has certified 335 projects. They received funding from the French government (French Inter-Ministry Fund FUI, Structural 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 Paris Region. Total investment is close to €1.9 billion ($2.2bn) and €708 million ($803M) of public aid.

www.medicen.org