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.

ADC Therapeutics raise $76m in Series E expansion

According to Chris Martin, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of ADC Therapeutics the proceeds will be used to fund preparations for a Biologic License...

Philogen SpA raises €62m to push registration

The VC-independent company founded by Dario Neri (ETH Zürich) in 1996 develops proprietary and partnered immunocytokines, that is antibody-cytokine...

€8m for universal flu vaccine

One vaccine to prevent all flu infections now and in future: with this premise, French vaccine maker Osivax has managed to secure €8m in a Series A...

Genmab launches US$502m IPO

Genmab has priced its shares at US$17.75 per ADS. The company will offer a total of 28,500,000 ADSs, corresponding to 2,850,000 underlying ordinary...

Confo Therapeutics raise €30m in Series A financing

Confo Therapeutics has a dual business model. With revenues from drug discovery partnerships, the company has built a portfolio of first-in-class...

AI improves protein manufacture

For unknown reasons, every production cell line or bacterial strain used to express therapeutic proteins recombinantly, has a preference for a...

US patent office grants Charpentier CRISPR patent

ERS Genomics Ltd, which was formed to provide broad access to the CRISPR/Cas9 intellectual property co-owned by Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier, announced...