Innovation Zone

ISCT is thrilled to introduce its inaugural Innovation Zone, a dedicated space for disruptive cell and gene therapy (CGT) start-ups to network, increase corporate visibility and present the latest innovations in advanced therapies at ISCT 2023 Paris.

ISCT has identified a select group of applicants who represent the future of the field and are spearheading the development of cutting-edge CGT products. 

To hear first-hand from these innovators, join us at the Innovation Zone Presentation Session on Wednesday, May 31, at 7:30PM!

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ISCT 2023 Innovation Zone Judges



Gad Berdugo, MBA
Managing Partner
Explorium Capital LLC

Mr. Berdugo is the Managing Partner of Explorium Capital LLC, a strategic and financial advisory firm focusing on the global biotechnology sector. He currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of clinical development stage precision oncology company, Diaccurate and as an Executive In Residence for Columbia Technology Ventures.

Mr. Berdugo brings over 25 years of biotech corporate & business development, strategy, operational, financial, investment and general venture management experience.

Bryan Poltilove, MBA
Operating Partner 
BroadOak

As Operating Partner, Mr. Poltilove leads BroadOak’s investment strategy in Cell and Gene Therapy, Bioproduction, and Cell Biology.  Mr. Poltilove joined BroadOak after 12 years with Thermo Fisher Scientific where he served as Vice President and General Manager.  Mr. Poltilove led long-range strategy and day-to-day operations for the company’s cell and gene therapy business.  Prior to Thermo Fisher, Mr. Poltilove served as Director of Revenue Strategy & Operations at the Corporate Executive Board and also held several commercial strategy roles with Johnson & Johnson. 

Dominic Wall, PhD
Executive Director
Business Ventures at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Dominic is Executive Director Business Ventures at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, leading the organisation’s existing and emerging business ventures programs. He oversees the national Centre of Excellence in Cellular Immunotherapy at Peter Mac, which was established in 2019 with an $80 million contribution from the Commonwealth Government. He also governs Peter Mac’s Pathology services, and the associated business unit Nexomics that provides specialised accredited medical oncology testing for clinical research. Dominic is also the founder, CEO (interim) and CSO. of Peter Mac’s majority owned and controlled independent and commercial business Cell Therapies Pty Ltd.

Kim Watanabe, PhD
Executive
Director
Cell & Gene Therapy Pillar Thermo Fisher

Dr. Kim Watanabe is an Executive Director, Cell & Gene Therapy Pillar Head at PPD, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific. She leads business strategies in Hematology/ Oncology clinical development services with 20+ years of combined experience in technical, business and operations. 

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Introducing the 2023 Innovation Zone Start-Up Exhibitors

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Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden Alder Therapeutics AB is a development-stage, private biotechnology company focused on building a novel cell therapy platform with best functional cells based on the most simple and robust processes.

The unique AlderEdge™ platform will improve access to pluripotent stem cell therapy treatment for patients. Our overall ambition is to deliver cell therapies with the potential to halt or reverse disease progress for people living with serious diseases. Our two development programs aim to treat inherited retinal diseases and chronic heart diseases. In both programs we have pre-clinical proof of concept of repaired function in multiple animal models including large animal models. At the moment we are finetuning our CMC, pre-clinical, clinical and regulatory strategy to make a roadmap to the clinic.

We believe our platform can be used in principle for any pluripotent stem cell therapy and are willing to partner with companies that have problems with their differentiation processes. 

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We are supporting industry experts in Cell Therapy Development with MARS immunomagnetic cell separation Platform. Our innovative, column-free, immunomagnetic cell isolation instruments support the processing of both small and large-volume samples. We also offer cell isolation kits that include RUO and GMP reagents. 

Our users can easily transition from an R&D-scale workflow to a manufacturing-scale Cell Therapy development process, from Lab Bench to Clean Room, using the same technology, saving precious time and generating consistent, reproducible results. No matter how challenging, our multidisciplinary team will work with you and together we will achieve the results you envisioned!

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Bluecord is a technology company that builds integrated, user-friendly, and cost effective GMP software for cell and gene therapy organizations. Our integrated modules communicate with one another to reduce error entries and enrich GMP workflows. Our focus on user-experience means that our software is intuitive and user-friendly, making it accessible to people of all technical backgrounds. With a focus on cost-effectiveness, our affordable software enables nimble teams to increase their operational efficiencies.

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CORE BIOGENSIS -Strasbourg, France-, provides next-generation recombinant proteins for cell manufacturing industries. Rooted by the principles of the bioeconomy, the company delivers its exclusive Ultra-Scalable Biomanufacturing as a Service (UBaaS) platform for the benefit of business leaders, scientists, and ultimately patients in the field of advanced therapies. By employing proprietary genetic engineering, plant biology, protein expression and purification technologies, the company offers high quality products, which improve the standards of bioactivity and purity for cell culture, while being produced at the scale and costs needed for cellular therapies. Their portfolio counts with a wide list of growth factors, cytokines, and cell culture supplements for pluripotent, mesenchymal, and immune cells. More importantly, their supply solutions enable for stock security and long-term use batch reservation, thanks to the natural preservation of the proteins in the bioproduction platform.
Core Biogenesis is dedicated to improving our present and future lives by re-connecting scientific advancements to natural resources, and ensuring scalability, sustainability and worldwide accessibility for the medicines that define the future of health. Established from scientific rigor and entrepreneurial vision, our fast-growing team is fostered by diversity and inclusion in science, business, and technology, and we are fully devoted to help those making the world a better place through the discovery of novel treatments for life devastating diseases.

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Cyto-care.eu GmbH is providing cell products for biomedical research, drug discovery, process development, and cell and gene therapy starting material. We are very experienced in performing Leukapheresis from healthy donors, stimulated and unstimulated.
Our Leukopaks are collected in our cell collection center in Vienna. All work is performed under EU and Austrian-registered and compliant collection procedures by our medical personnel under the supervision of a physician to ensure consistency and high yields.
Leukopaks are enriched leukapheresis products collected from normal peripheral blood. It is composed of a variety of blood cells including monocytes, lymphocytes, platelets, plasma, and red cells. A leukopak contains a higher concentration of cells as compared to standard venipuncture collection methods or buffy coat products.

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denovoMATRIX designs and produces biomaterials, which enable cell manufacturing in higher quality, quantity and safety.

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EVerZom is a spin-off from the University of Paris/CNRS dedicated to developing manufacturing technologies of extracellular vesicles. The company provides research, development and manufacturing services to biotech and academic institutions in the field with a strong know how in EV production, isolation, characterization and engineering. The company is based on patented technologies that enables high yield and large scale cGMP EV manufacturing.

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IPSirius’ stem cell-based vaccines induce an immune response against several thousand distinct antigens found in cancer cells, in particular those in cancer with stemness features. This primes the patient’s immune system to attack a much wider range of tumor cells and eliminate cancer stem cells. This results in a more effective treatment for the cancer, and reduce chance of the tumor regrowth after therapy.

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We are revolutionizing the way we grow cells at scale using acoustic waves. In other words, we play music to cell to unlock efficiencies in cell and gene therapy manufacturing.

Showing 100x increase in cell density and 50x reduction in production costs, our patented acoustic-based bioreactors help our partners in drug development unlock patient access to gene therapies. Being cell-agnostic and scalable, our process has significant potential across a range of high-value cell-based therapies.

Founders:

CEO Amélie Quilichini, is a former professional pianist and engineer by training with 8 years of experience in managing international deeptech projects. She has successfully launched a hardware venture for a corporate as an intrapreneur, which generated 50 m€ in revenues for the firm on year 1 – and was further integrated as a business unit of the group.

CTO Gabriel Dumy, is one of the worldwide experts mastering the underlying physics behind acoustic cell manipulation. Experienced hardware builder passionate about biology, he started his career designing electric field cell alignment devices for Cambridge University and Curie Institute. He expanded his know-how to acoustics throughout his PhD at ESPCI Paris and later research, where he even designed and conducted a zero-g flight campaign.

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MicrofluidX is a UK-based company developing bioprocessing hardware for cell-based research and cell-based therapies. The Cyto Engine blends scalable bioreactors, online sensing, and data analytics, to generate 100,000 times more data for research, reduces time to market by several years and cuts manufacturing costs 10-fold. The research Engine automates end-to-end cell culture for up to 30 independent experiments in microfluidic bioreactors ranging from 0.5mL to 12mL. Integrated analytics include live cell imaging and cell count estimate, online pH, dissolved oxygen, and metabolites. The manufacturing Engine automates end-to-end batch manufacturing for cell therapy in a microfluidic highly parallelised bioreactor ranging from 20mL to 500mL.

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Limula provides a unique automation technology for scalable production of cell therapies. We are based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Our proprietary solution can perform sequential steps of Cell & Gene Therapy (CGT) manufacturing in a single device, using end-to-end automation and integrated process analytics. By combining our expertise and versatile tool, we support the rapid and cost-effective development of cell therapy products across different modalities, at all stages of their life cycle, facilitating the transition from R&D to commercial-scale production.


Our modular manufacturing platform is ideally suited to sequence complex cell processing steps. It is highly scalable, with the ability to precisely handle from 1 million (1e6) to 100 billion (1e11) cells. The patented design features of our solution support unique functionalities, including fast and gentle cell sedimentation and wash based on in-situ centrifugation. This allows flexibility on the volume of the sample being processed (5-500mL), while keeping the cells in the same container along the entire manufacturing process.

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PL BioScience GmbH is a Germany-based life science company committed to delivering safe and animal component-free cell expansion tools. PL BioScience was founded in 2015 as an RWTH Aachen University spin-off. Since then, they have been exploiting the broad potential of human platelets – the basis of their cell culture supplement Human Platelet Lysate (HPL). The company’s mission is to enhance the advances in cellular research and therapy with one forward-looking Technology: ELAREM™.

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