Latest News

Germany to pump €1bn into breakthrough innovation

German Research Minister Anja Karliczek and Economics Minister Peter Altmaier make a joint statement on the founding of the Agency for Jump Innovations following the meeting of the Federal Cabinet. © BMBF / Hans-Joachim Rickel


by tg

Germany’s government announced that it will create an agency for breakthrough ("jump") innovation to foster technology transfer of risky research projects with high market potential into products.

The German agency precede EU plans to create a similar EU agency within its next research framework programme starting in 2021. The agency will be funded with roughly €1bn over 10 years.

The move is intented to keep value creation in Germany.  The idea for such an agency is lent from the US agency DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which was founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950ies to support commercialisation of groundbreaking inventions such as the Internet, GPS or driverless vehicles. Besides Germany, Sweden and Switzerland have already established innovation agencies for non-military purposes. 

The German agency is set to start next year. According to Germany’s minister for economics, Peter Altmaier, a first call will seek for 3 to 4 promising artificial intelligence projects.

Researchers target neuroblastoma with ALK-ADC

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) has been demonstrated to be a moving target expressed in neuroblastomas: if targeted with small-molecule inhibitors,...

EMA recommends bluebird's β-thalassemia gene therapy

Patients suffering from beta-thalassaemia cannot produce enough beta-globin, a key component of haemoglobin, the protein that carries the oxygen in...

Treating diabetes by mimicking gut bacteria effects

In Nature Chemical Biology, the international team headed by Graeme Milligan from University of Glasgow report that drugs might mimic the...

Calypso Biotech cash in €20M Series A financing

Calypso Biotech BV (Amsterdam/Geneva), a spin-out of Merck-Serono, which became company in residence at JLABS in Beerse, Belgium, said it will use...

Evotec partners with Mark Foundation for Cancer Research

During the next two years, the partners will use Evotec's proprietary new drug discovery platform TargetAlloMod to screen or validate small molecule...

Researchers report how body fat affects imune cells

While the initial discovery of the presence of immune cells in fat was a surprising revelation to the field of immunology, it is now well-known that...

Biomarker can exclude acute kidney injury

Peer-reviewed data on the biological variation of four AKI biomarker tests in 85 patients with stable heart disease (enrolled in the Valsartan...