Portugal Day at MassBio

AICEP-Portuguese Trade and Investment Agency, together with the U.S. Ambassador to Portugal Robert Sherman and the Portuguese Minister of Economy Manuel Caldeira Cabral, are bringing a select group of Portuguese biotech companies and investors to MassBio on December 19 to discuss transatlantic synergies with Europe in these sectors.  Join us to learn how Portugal is developing a vibrant biotech industry and successful startup ecosystem with partners around the globe. 

Portuguese partners attending:

1) FASTinov is a startup in the field of in vitro diagnostics, dedicated to providing solutions that improve patient outcomes still contributing to lower healthcare costs through the ultrafast diagnosis of antimicrobial resistance to specific antibiotics. Microbiology laboratories are in need of new tools to address what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls one of the most serious healthcare threats of our time, antibiotic resistance. A significant contributing factor to the rise of resistance is the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, which is exacerbated by a lack of timely diagnostic results. The delay of these results is often due to the reliance by microbiology laboratories on traditional culture-based tests that often take two to three days to complete. Our technology platform is built to address these challenges by delivering significantly faster and accurate susceptibility tests of infectious pathogens in patient samples mainly positive blood cultures.

2) Stemmatters is a preclinical stage regenerative medicine company developing game changing medical devices for large unmet medical needs. Stemmatters provides xenofree chemically defined biomaterials for facile delivery and retention of cells into the body. Our lead product for cartilage repair offers enhanced therapeutic efficacy and cost effectiveness. Stemmatters explores a versatile platform technology from which multiple compounds can be generated with ample freedom to operate that support the establishment of safer, less costly and more effective medical device and combination therapies in many treatment disease and application contexts.

3) Gene PreDiT is a Portuguese biotech company focused on the development of targeted therapy for obesity. We identified a new genetic biomarker that indicates a predisposition for obesity and also a small molecule, under our reprofilling approach, that is able to reduce the lipid levels in animals with a specific genetic profile. Our data indicates that this genetic biomarker should be present in approximately 20% of the individuals. We are currently conducting a proof of concept Phase IIa Clinical Trial and the results from this Clinical Trial will be available by the third trimester of 2017.

4) Immunethep discovered a novel mechanism of immunosuppression, which is shared by different pathogenic bacteria. By targeting this mechanism we are developing broad coverage Immunotherapy effective against multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria. Immunethep has a global and breakthrough solution for an unmet medical need, Anti-microbial Resistance. With one single immunetherapy Immunethep is able to prevent the bacterial infections from the most life threatening bacteria, namely: E. coli, K. pneumonia, S. aureus, S. pneumonia and GBS .

5) doDOC is the fastest way to create and manage enterprise documentation. doDOC provides a single collaborative platform for creating and editing documents, with granular control over information, generating a comprehensive audit trail of every single event in the life span of every document. This way, doDOC enables users to create perfect documents up to 70% faster than any other solution in the market, ensuring auditability of the results.

Investors:

6) Portugal Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in people solving global needs with innovative, scientific and technology-based solutions. We partner with exceptional entrepreneurial teams during their early stages, and assist them in achieving later levels of competitiveness and success.

7) P-Bio

PROGRAM: "PORTUGAL DAY @ MassBio"

Massachusetts Biotechnology Council

300 Technology Square, 8th floor 

Cambridge, MA 02139

December 19, 2016

1:45 pm – 2:00 pm             Registration

2:00 pm                              Welcoming remarks by the President & CEO of Massachusetts Biotechnology Council

                Robert Coughlin

2:05 pm                              Introduction by Bruce Tidor, Ph.D., Director of MIT Portugal                                         

2:10 pm                              INNOVATION: MIT & Portugal -  Keynote Speaker: Elazer Edelman, M.D.,   Ph.D., MIT, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and

                Women’s Hospital

2:40 pm                              The Biotech ecosystem in Portugal by Filipe Assoreira, President of P-Bio

2:50 pm                              Portugal Ventures

3:00 pm                              Portuguese Startups: Immunethep, Stemmatters, FASTinov, Gene PreDiT & doDOC

3:25 pm                              Consul General of Portugal in Boston José Velez Caroço

3:35 pm                              US Ambassador to Portugal Robert Sherman

3:45 pm                              Closing remarks by the Portuguese Minister of Economy Manuel Caldeira Cabral

3:55 pm                              Networking and one-on-one meetings

4:30 pm – 6:30 pm          Networking reception and one-on-one meetings

                                             Catalyst Restaurant

                                             300 Technology Square  

                                             Cambridge, MA 02139

For information please call Maria Freitas, Tel 646-723 0214 or email: graca.freitas@portugalglobal.pt