This afternoon, NLSDays began with the presentation of the winners of the Nordic Life Science Awards

The Nordic Life Science Awards is given to one academic research group project (“Academic Class”) with a break-through potential and to one life science-company (“Business Class”) with products or projects that can contribute to great patient benefit. A second company (“Delegates Choice”) will be selected by popular vote onsite.

The Jury consists of: Dr. Jonas Ekstrand, Program Director NLSDays, SwedenBIO (Chair),  Dr. Ulrica Sehlstedt, Partner, Arthur D. Little, Ms. Sophie Labrosse, Cluster Officer at Novo Nordisk Foundation, Dr. Christos Vaitsis, Business Creation Manager at EIT Health Scandinavia.

Nordic Life Science Academic Class Award

Academia is a key engine for medical innovation and many life science projects becoming commercial successful originate from academic centers. Big ideas very often come from ground-braking academic research. Recognizing that the majority of the global companies made academic-industrial partnerships an integral part of their strategies and opened their R&D organizations to external innovation.

The Nordic Life Science Awards – Academic Class presentations features exciting academic projects from five Nordic countries illustrating the rich and broad research milieus and their motivation to advance their ideas into innovations for patients. The session is hosted by SPARK Norway and delivered in collaboration with SPARK Finland, the Swedish SciLifeLabs, the Danish BioInnovation Institute, Promote Iceland and sponsored by Arthur D. Little and EIT Health Scandinavia.

And the winner was … Patrik Hollos from Bioscience Turku for his excellent research into a novel Parkinsons biomarker assay.

Nordic Life Science Business Class and Delegates Choice Awards

Nordic life science companies are well known and respected for their strong science-base and a long history of bringing innovation to the market. The company session will feature two companies from each of the Nordic countries. The winner of the “Business Class Award” show scientific excellence and run projects that have a break-through possibility or have already made it to the market adding significant value to patients. For the “Delegates Choice Award”: the audience will be asked to vote for the company they are most likely to invest in should they be given the opportunity. The session is hosted by SwedenBIO, Oslo Cancer Cluster, Turku Science Park, the Danish BioInnovation Institute and sponsored by Arthur D. Little and EIT Health Scandinavia.

Finalists:

Aiforia Technologies (Finland) Deep learning AI for image analysis

Akthelia (Iceland) A novel antimicrobial platform

Cirqle Biotechnologies (Denmark) Focused on developing innovative contraceptives

Delsitech (Finland) New nanotech solutions in drug delivery

Elypta (Sweden) Metabolic biomarkers and AI to detect cancer

EpiEndo (Iceland) Focused on novel solutions for chronic airway diseases

Kongsberg Beam Technology (Norway) Precision against cancer

SARomics Biostructures (Sweden) Protein crystallography and drug discovery services

Synklino (Denmark) Eradicating cytomegalovirus infections

Vaccibody (Norway) Tailored vaccine therapy

And the winner was … Karl Bergman, CEO of Elypta. The company’s work into using AI and metabolic biomarkers to detect cancer impressed both the jury and the audience. And they also won the Delegate’s choice.

Photo of all the presenters: Camille Sonally/SwedenBIO