BioTech Tuesday’s Innovation Competition at District Hall

Biotech Tuesday’s first ever Innovation Competition was held last month on Tuesday, November 19th at the brand new Innovation District Hall – a special venue designed to promote collaboration and a physical neighborhood of innovation. MedTech Boston, in partnership with LaBiotech.fr, attended this highly interesting event hosted by Seth Taylor (check out MedTech Boston’s interview with Seth here!)

Biotech Tuesday has organized biotech events since 2002 in Boston. While the meetings usually focus on networking, last month’s meet-up provided a special opportunity for local start-ups and small businesses to showcase their biotech products as part of an innovation competition. Of 25 initial project, 6 finalists were selected to deliver live podium presentations before a panel of skilled judges in the biotech space. The judges were:

• Steven Arkinstall, Senior Vice President and Head of US Research and Global External Innovation, EMD Serono
• Charles Wilson, VP and Global Head of Strategic Alliances, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Inc.
• Peter Parker, Co-Founder and Director of Programming of LabCentral, and Founder and President of BioInnovation

Attendees had an opportunity to network the hour before the presentations, and over 100 investors, entrepreneurs and scientists were making the rounds, swapping cards and making new connections.

The 6 selected presenters were greeted by a packed audience, and delivered 5 minute pitches followed by comments from the ‘piranha’ judges. While all of the hi-lighted companies presented fantastic ideas, a special congrats goes out to the winners:

• Riparian Pharmaceuticals – Novartis Innovation Award and the Pharmatek Innovation Award for their novel therapeutics for reducing vascular complications among patients with inflammatory and autoimmune disorders
• Cocoon Biotech – EMD Serono Innovation Award for their silk-based injectable gel for osteoarthritis
• Cellanyx Diagnostics – LabCentral Innovation Award for their prostate cancer diagnostic lab-on-a-chip
• DavosPharma – Most Innovative Product or Service Award for their Anthem-GenTox assay

Cocoon Biotech took the first prize of $5,000 awarded by EMD Serono. Additionally, Cellanyx received one free month of incubation assistance at LabCentral. Finally, Riparian Pharma was awarded 10 hours of coaching with the business development team of Novartis and $3,000 of chemical reagents from PharmaTek.

Congrats to the winners, and we look forward to hearing exciting new developments!

This summary was written in collaboration with Philip Hemme, Co-Founder of the biotechnology news website LaBiotech.fr.