Although this is by no means expected from ICREA researchers, it so happens that sometimes they hit on something that shows promise of becoming a powerful new technology, but it seems impossible to develop that further without significant investment of time and money. In these cases, many choose to explore the option of creating a spin-off company dedicated to the concept.

List of spin off companies
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PENTABILITIES
Supported by the Institute for Political Economy and Governance and ICREA.
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Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Caterina Calsamiglia.
Born in May 2019.CLOSE -
PEPTOMYC
Jointly supported by the Vall d’Hebron Institut d’Oncologia (VHIO) and ICREA.
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Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Laura Soucek.
Born in December 2014.CLOSEPEPTOMYC
Peptomyc SL is a company focused on the
development of a new generation of cell
penetrating peptides (CPPs) for cancer
treatment. The company was founded in
December 2014 and it is based on Dr. Soucek’s
scientific work focused on Myc inhibition.Background and market opportunity
Chemotherapy is currently the most common
non-surgical therapeutic option for the majority
of cancers. Unfortunately, it often results in poor
overall outcome for the patients due to the
development of resistance to these nonselective
treatments. Currently the alternative to
such therapies is so-called “personalized
medicine”, but very few targeted therapies have
been commercialized to date and these target a
restricted subset of cancers. In addition, the
majority of these therapies target degenerate
and redundant functions in tumor cells, resulting
once again in resistance to treatment. Myc is an
oncogene causally implicated in most cancers
and is often associated with aggressive, poorly
differentiated and angiogenic tumors. Myc has a
non-redundant function in cancer around which
tumors cannot evolve, hence targeting Myc is the
most promising therapeutic opportunity we
have to date. However, a Myc inhibitor has yet to
become clinically available.Technology
Dr. Laura Soucek has generated Omomyc, a
dominant-negative Myc mutant that is able to
prevent Myc-dependent gene transactivation
functions both in vitro and in vivo, negating
Myc’s ability to bind its DNA recognition binding
site. Omomyc has proven to be the most
efficacious direct Myc inhibitor to date and
appears to be therapeutically valuable in a
variety, if not all, cancer types, but so far it has
only been considered a proof of principle, whose
application could be limited to gene therapy.
However, our new results indicate that the
Omomyc peptide itself displays excellent cell
penetrating properties and can efficiently enter
cells and exert a strong anti-Myc activity that
results in arrest/death of all cancer cell lines
tested so far. Peptomyc SL now aims to further
develop the Omomyc peptide - and improved
variants - into clinically viable therapeutics for
the treatment of cancer patients. -
PULMOBIOTICS
Supported by the Centre de Regulació Genòmica and ICREA.
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Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Luis Serrano
Born in March 2020.CLOSEPULMOBIOTICS
More than 1 billion persons suffer from chronic respiratory conditions worldwide, including 235 million people suffering from asthma and more than 200 million people enduring chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which is moderate to severe in 65 million. 8.7 million people develop tuberculosis annually and more than 50 million people struggle with occupational lung diseases. Respiratory diseases are also among the leading causes of death worldwide, with 3.5 million deaths being attributed to lower respiratory diseases, 3.3 million to COPD and 1.4 million to tracheal, bronchial or lung cancer.
Building on over 10 years of research funded with over 14m € by Spanish and EU grant agencies (details here), we have developed a proprietary microbial engineering and synthetic biology toolbox that underpins a novel live biotherapeutics platform. Pulmobiotics will use its technology to discover and develop novel treatments and vaccines for respiratory diseases, which are among the most common causes of severe illness and death worldwide.
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QURV TECHNOLOGIES
Supported by the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) and ICREA.
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Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Gerasimos Konstantatos and Frank Koppens
Born in July 2020.CLOSEQURV TECHNOLOGIES
Qurv develops wide-spectrum image sensor technologies and integrated solutions to enable next-gen computer vision applications, addressing the expanding needs of an autonomous and intelligent new world.
In the past, vision technologies were developed by capturing pictures from the type of information that can be detected by the human eye- ‘pretty’ pictures. With the emergence of powerful data science techniques, traditional imaging is shifting towards advanced sensing that unlocks new unprecedented capabilities destined to impact our society.
Qurv's technology leverages current CMOS scalable manufacturing and advanced materials to unlock new levels of performance, reliability and function in XR devices, service robots and automotive.
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QUSIDE
Supported by the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) and ICREA.
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Entrepeneurs: ICREA Research Professors Morgan Mitchell and Valerio Pruneri.
Formalised in September 2017.CLOSEQUSIDE
QuSide Technologies S.L. is set up to develop quantum technologies for the cyber-security and super-computation worlds. By exploiting photonics technologies and by leveraging the maturity of the semiconductor manufacturing industry, QuSide products bring unprecedented security and performance to the information era.