Empresas derivadas

Aunque no es algo que se espere en absoluto de los investigadores de ICREA, a veces dan con algo que promete convertirse en una potente tecnología nueva pero parece imposible ir más allá en su desarrollo sin una inversión significativa de tiempo y dinero. En estos casos, muchos optan por estudiar la creación de una SPIN OFF.

List of spin off companies

  • AELIX THERAPEUTICS

    Supported by Irsicaixa AIDS Research Institute, HIVACAT and ICREA.
    Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Christian Brander.
    Born in November 2015.

    view details
    CLOSE

    AELIX THERAPEUTICS

    AELIX Therapeutics is a HIV vaccine development company focused on the development and clinical testing of HIV vaccine candidates.  Founded in December 2015, the company closed a first round of investment of 11.5 mio and has hired 4 employees with offices at the Parc Scientific in Barcelona. The company works closely with investigators at leading HIV research institutions in Barcelona (Hospital Clinc and Irsicaixa) and other centers abroad. These collaborations ensure direct patient access and excellent clinical and laboratory monitoring of future clinical trials.  A phase I clinical trial to test the safety of AELIX’s lead products is scheduled to start in the fall of 2016.  A proof-of concept phase II trial in HIV infected individuals is envisioned to be completed by the end of  2019.

    AELIX’s vaccine platform consists of a novel design of a HIV T cell immunogen sequence that is delivered by various vectors in HIV infected and uninfected individuals.  The immunogen design is based on detailed immune analyses in more than one thousand HIV infected individuals from 4 continents and covering geographic areas where different clades of HIV dominate.  Its design was completed within the HIVACAT program, the Catalan HIV vaccine program started in 2008.  The initial clinical application of this new vaccine approach is focused on its use as an HIV-specific immunotherapy in already HIV infected individuals.  The goal is to rejuvenate, re-educate or completely newly induce most effective CD4 and CD8 T cell responses to relatively conserved regions of the HIV proteome. Such responses are expected to act against a large portion of the global viral diversity and should allow infected individuals to avoid the need for life-long treatment with antiretroviral drugs.  Strategic partnerships will be developed to conduct future large-scale clinical trials and to possibly further improve viral control by including additional immune-based strategies and compounds acting on latent viral reservoirs.  With positive data in therapeutic proof-of-concept studies, AELIX will consider testing its lead candidate as a preventive vaccine as well.  

  • AHEAD THERAPEUTICS

    Supported by the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) and ICREA.
    Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Daniel Maspoch.
    Born in December 2017.

    view details
    CLOSE

    AHEAD THERAPEUTICS

    Ahead Therapeutics SL was founded on December 2017 between the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). The young biotech company is linked to the IGTP Immunology of Diabetes Research Group led by Dr Marta Vives-Pi and to the ICN2 Supramolecular Nanochemistry and Materials Group led by ICREA Research Prof. Daniel Maspoch, where researcher Dr Mary Cano is also based.

    The company was created to advance the development of therapies for autoimmune diseases and pursue their application in a clinical setting. It was established after the researchers generated and proved the efficacy of an immunotherapy approach for treating type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis based on nanotechnology. Specifically, the therapy uses liposomes to halt the self-destructive autoimmune response triggered by such diseases.

    The company aims to provide the financial and structural framework needed to take these results into the clinical arena and turn them into treatments for these and other autoimmune diseases, which are becoming more and more prevalent. Just weeks after it was founded, Ahead Therapeutics SL had received support from several investors. Apart from the seed capital, the company has already attracted 1.1 million euros in private funding.

  • BRAINGAZE

    Supported by the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and ICREA.
    Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Hans Supèr.
    Born in September 2013.

    view details
    CLOSE

    BRAINGAZE

    Braingaze SL, founded by Laslzo Bax and Hans Supèr, is a spin-off company from ICREA/UB. Braingaze offers a patented method to measure visual attention by analyzing minute eye movements of the observer. The method paves the way for the development of a novel and
    clean biomarker of attention for eye tracking applications. It operates with any commercial available binocular eye tracker device and can be incorporated into any existing eye tracker software package.

    Commercial applications

     Eye tracking is the process of measuring the point of eye gaze, i.e. where one is looking. In recent years, the increased sophistication and accessibility of eye tracking technologies have generated a great deal of interest in various business sectors. Existing applications include web usability, advertising, package design, user interfacing, and assistive technology. Emerging markets are automotive engineering, gaming industry, health care & diagnostics, production industry, and consumer electronics. Examples of applications being developed include mobile phones, lap-top integrated user interfaces, iPad and iPhone apps, gaming consoles and digital cameras.
    Eye position data is translated into the observers’ preference. But whether a message or product will be seen depends on the attention of the observer; not on eye position.
    Braingaze offers a software module that establishes if a subject actually perceived what he/she gazed at. Braingaze method drastically increases the value of the typical eye tracking maps produced up to now.

    Clinical applications

    Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a developmental disorder, and is the most commonly studied and diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children, affecting about 3% to 6% of children globally and diagnosed in about 2% to 16% of school aged children, and 3% in adults. The routine assessment of ADHD, which is based on questionnaires and developmental, physical and mental examination, has many flaws and is inaccurate. More importantly, while clear symptoms are present at 3 years of age, current diagnosis cannot be done before the age of 6 prohibiting early treatment, which is essential for preventing personal and social problems, and economical costs associated to ADHD.
    Braingaze offers a simple, fast, accurate tool to diagnose ADHD in children and adults. The biomarker of visual attention detects with high accuracy ADHD in children. As a result, diagnosis of ADHD can be more accurate, lower cost, less time consuming, observer-independent, earlier age diagnosis, and a much better communication of diagnosis fundamentals (by graphs rather than questionnaire responses being ranked). It also allows tracking progress of patient treatment. Braingaze intends to develop an exercise App allowing to pre-screen children for ADHD and to train children in their ability to focus attention and suppress distractive inputs.
    www.braingaze.com
     

  • Chabot Creation Services Logo
    Chatbot Creation Services SL (Inactive)

    Supported by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and ICREA
    Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Jordi Cabot
    Born in June 2021

  • DROPLITE TECHNOLOGIES (Inactive)

    Supported by the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) and ICREA.
    Entrepreneur: ICREA Research Professor Romain Quidant.
    Born in December 2018. Liquidated in 2021.

Pages