Catalonia accounts for investment in biotechnology – Pysn People and Society News

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The sector life sciences and health is gathering momentum in Catalonia despite coming from years of declines in both public and private investment in research and development (R & D). The latest report from the BioRegion , presented Thursday by Biocat, estimated that the sector has increased by 24% its billing respect latest report published in 2013. together, the companies in this sector billed 14,360 million euros , 7% of Catalan GDP and employ 42,133 workers. Although public and private investment in R & D has fallen about 11% between 2009 and 2014, direct investment in Catalan biotech companies has doubled in the period 2013-2015 to exceed 100 million euros, 36% of the total captured by the sector in Spain.

Overall, most indicators of the sector are optimistic, but as warned Thursday the CEO of Biocat, Albert Barberà, “there is still much work to be done, the investment is still low compared with the reference countries and are still missing transfer mechanisms between research and the real economy.” As highlighted by the report, Catalonia currently has 734 companies in the life sciences and health sector. Of these, 221 are biotech and pharmaceutical 46.

Biocat takes stock with chiaroscuro of biotechnology activity in Catalonia from 2013 to 2015. This directory records 26 active investment entities, including business angels, corporate investors, institutional eight venture capital . According Biocat, despite all these actors have operations there are four specialized that they have invested significant volumes:

• Caixa Capital Risc has led or co-led 26 transactions worth almost 24 M €

• Ysios has led or co-led four actions amounting overall 28,4 M €.

• Inveready has led or co-led 10 investment agreements by aggregate 9 M €.

• Healthequity is the bottom driven by College of Physicians of Barcelona and manages the firm Riva y García and has participated in two rounds closed in 2015 by Minoryx Therapeutics .

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between 2013 and 2015, 75 new companies, 14% more than the previous two years and a figure that has already exceeded 100 this 2016 actually created, on average, in the Principality three biotech companies are created every month. In this sense, Barberá stressed that mortality of Catalan companies in this sector is much lower than the Spanish average. In the last decade extinct only 9% of the 337 projects born , a less than 50% of the average rate of mortality innovative companies in the state.

A growing sector

The report Biocat notes that Catalonia is among the four European countries with companies in the sector health per capita, more specifically, Catalonia is the second country in Europe in pharmaceutical companies per capita, behind Belgium and the fourth in biotechnology companies per capita, behind Sweden , Switzerland and Israel.

In fact, 30% of investment in R & D by biotechnology companies in the state comes from Catalonia, specifically the expenditure amounted to 416 million euros , 28.7% of the total in 2014 as a percentage of GDP, Catalonia allocates 1.47% investment in R & D, above the Spanish average is 1.23%. However, Madrid surpasses Catalonia in the latter area. The communities that spend the most on R & D in absolute terms are Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, but the report notes that in 2014 all communities in the state reduced this expense.

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