SPEED OF LIFE

Near-instant detection of live stem cells

– The Biomarker Gliostem^® will help neurosurgeons distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue during brain tumor surgery

Celluminova specializes in developing new tools for stem cell research, including cancer stem cells. The patented biomarker GlioStem is intended for the detection and visualization of stem cell-like cells in brain tumors. Today, there are no products on the market that target stem cell-like cells in these tumors. The goal for GlioStem is to be used during surgery to completely remove tumor tissue and thereby lead to increased patient survival and quality of life.

Read more about Celluminova

Precision medicine for a sustainable world

Gradientech is a Swedish diagnostics company dedicated to supporting the modern microbiology lab with state-of-the-art solutions that facilitate the testing of time-critical sepsis samples.

Gradientech is currently developing the in vitro diagnostic QuickMIC^® system, a new platform for ultra-rapid testing of antibiotic resistance. The system is expected to become the most rapid solution for determining the appropriate antibiotic treatment of sepsis patients. Rapid testing of antibiotic resistance is vital for increasing sepsis patient survival, reducing healthcare costs, and lowering the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Read more about Gradientech

PU sensor enables prevention of pressure ulcers

PU sensor has developed a method for evaluating a patient’s physiological condition regarding blood flow at pressure and thereby anticipate the risk of pressure ulcer and prevent it from appearing.

Pressure ulcer (bedsore) is a both painful and dangerous but unfortunately common medical injury. Among health care related injuries, pressure ulcers are one of the most burdensome both economically and when it comes to human suffering, OECD reports. Pressure ulcers arise in all age groups and all over the world. Cost increase with ulcer severity because the time to heal is longer and the incidence of complication is higher in more severe cases. The cost of treating pressure ulcer is likely to increase in the future as the population ages.

Read more about PU Sensor

Ilya Pharma is developing next-generation immunotherapies to treat wounds in skin and mucosa

The ILP-technology is based on deploying chemokines, which until now have been regarded too unstable to be suitable as therapeutics. Ilya Pharma has overcome this problem by letting live lactic acid bacteria produce and deliver the human therapeutic chemokines on site in wounds in skin or e.g in the intestine acting like small bioreactors. In addition to the documented biologic and clinical effect on accelerating the healing and recovery, it is a very cost efficient system to deliver drugs, compared to cell therapies and other traditional biologics.

Read more about Ilya Pharma

Providing the antibiotic resistance profile at the point of care

The increase of antibiotic resistance is a global threat to human health. It is due to over- and miss-use of antibiotics, as a result of that doctors currently need to prescribe antibiotics before they know the resistance profile of the bacteria.

Astrego’s technology provides such a resistance profile in 30 min and therfore allows prescription of effective,  non-broad spectrum, antibiotics at the point-of-care. Astrego’s first product targets urinary tract infection, which affects 100 milj women each year, and represents 15% of the antibiotic use in human medicine.

Read more at astrego.se

BioReperia’s revolutionary ZTX-Platform and related products

BioReperia helps every cancer patient to get the most effective treatment available, for their specific disease.

BioReperia has developed a unique zebrafish tumor xenograft (ZTX™) platform that provides functional in-vivo data to evaluate treatment efficacy for tumor regression and metastasis inhibition in only 5 days.

Our goal is to increase the speed and accuracy of preclinical drug development and clinical cancer treatment, enabling researchers and clinicians to select the drugs/drug candidates with the highest potential to succeed in less time.

Read more at bioreperia.com

With the vision of a world without anesthesia related complications

With the vision to eliminate anesthesia related complications, we develop and commercialize systems powered by unique algorithms and sensors to monitor patient muscle function and electrical impulses, before, during and after surgery.

The company’s solution is called TetraGraph®, a medical device system that digitally and continuously measures the level of neuromuscular blockade in the patient. The system is based on EMG technology and more than 10 of the R&D from the Mayo clinic in the US.

Read more at senzime.com

A great team with a drive to become number one

Advanced therapies are increasingly being developed for patients in need, thereby putting pressure on the drug developers to produce qualified, effective, and safe matches. Immuneed combines our strong scientific knowledge with a versatile preclinical platform based on fresh, circulating human blood. Thereby, we provide our customers with a tailored solution in the early stage of development, enabling safe and effective drugs.

Read more at immuneed.com

Everyone should understand their own health — meet Deversify

Deversify is a Swedish R&D company offering tech solutions in consumer health. We develop and commercialize mobile electronic devices and apps to monitor biomarkers for individualized health. Our products help people understand — and improve — their own health. Our mission is to act as a good force against today’s lifestyle diseases – such as obesity, diabetes, addictions, and cardiovascular disease.

Deversify operates in growing consumer health markets which today in Europe and US alone are valued at over USD 5 billion. Our first product, the ketone breathalyzer Acetrack®, measures if your body is burning fat and is currently sold to health-tech consumers. Deversify is here to help you understand your wellbeing holistically – inside and out, from ketones to ECG.

Read more at deversify.com

Meet Lead and UIC – Two of the leading business incubators in East Middle Sweden

It is a special edition episode, where you will have the opportunity of getting to know two of the leading business incubators LEAD (Business Incubator) and UIC – Uppsala Innovation Centre, two actors in the innovation support system, in East Middle Sweden.

In the podcast, Catharina Sandberg, CEO at Lead, and Andy Browning, Life Science Project Manager at UIC, talk about the support that the incubators offer to innovative companies through their various programs, about the collaborations within the national network of leading life science incubators (ALIS), the challenges ahead that companies must consider if they are to be relevant for the future among other interesting topics.

Read more at Lead.se and UIC.se

Lokon Pharma – an innovative Swedish cancer therapeutic biotech on their way to market

Lokon Pharma is a biotech company in Sweden based on research from well renowned Uppsala University. They develop a new cancer medicine based on a virus that selectively kill tumor cells and activates the patients own immune system to attack the tumor. It is often described as an immunostimulatory gene therapy.

In this pod, the inventor and CEO Angelica Loskog and the Head of Clinical Development Justyna Leja-Jarblad are discussing what motivates them to pursue such a venturous task as to bring a novel drug to market.

Read more at lokonpharma.com

STUNS Life science – Sustainable skill supply

Life science is an industry with a strong foothold in the Uppsala region, much thanks to successful collaborations between the business community, the two universities, and the University Hospital. In recent years the industry has expanded at a rapid pace, and forecasts predict that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Continued expansion, however, places demands on strategies for a sustainable supply of skills. Currently, certain skills are in higher demand than the labor market can offer, and short-term strategies are often applied.

Listen to Erik Allard, who is responsible for the area of skill supply at STUNS Life science, sharing his assessment of what could be done in order to meet the skill demand in a more sustainable way over time.

Read the report Sustainable skill supply by Erik Allard.
(The report is in Swedish)

Improving patient care with TIGR® Matrix

Our proven medical device technology is helping patients with breast cancer undergoing implant reconstruction to return to an active life and regain self-confidence together with a better body image.

Strong when you need it gone when you don’t!
TIGR® Matrix is fully resorbable surgical implant with the main purpose to help the body’s own healing. Its unique dual stage degradation design offers the necessary support to soft tissues in the initial wound healing process, and gradually resorbs until it is no longer needed and new strong connective tissue has replaced it.

Assisting surgeons find the best solution for their patients
Soft tissue positively remodels in response to the stimulus of increased mechanical load. TIGR®Matrix gives that additional support and is then replaced with host tissue to give permanent strength but none of the complications of a permanent mesh.

We listen to their needs and look for solutions
It is our role to empower both patients and surgeons to be informed and have access to the best available solutions that will improve the outcome of the treatment.

Read more at novusscientific.com

Test beds and biological production

Life science is an industry with a strong foothold in the Uppsala region, much thanks to successful collaborations between the business community, the two universities, and the University Hospital. In recent years the industry has expanded at a rapid pace, and forecasts predict that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

STUNS has collaborated with Testa Center since before its establishment in 2018. In this collaboration, STUNS contributes as an independent actor and develops innovation processes and collaboration formats.

Bioprocess is a pinpointed strategically important area by the Swedish government. Testa Center is a purpose-built open-access bioprocessing testbed with modern upscaling equipment to verify technology or scale-up processes. The main objective is to promote the life science sector’s growth and bridge the gap between discovery and industrialization.

Bio-Works – Next generation chromatography resins

In this episode, Jonathan Royce, CEO, and Johan Persäter, Regional Sales Manager at Bio-Works, talk more about the strong life sciences ecosystem that exists in Uppsala, and how it has benefited Bio-Works during a period of rapid growth. Johan and Jonathan also talk about the company’s future plans for expansion, and the importance of a positive company culture for organizations in a scale-up phase. On a personal level, both guests tell the story of what brought them to Bio-Works from much larger companies.

Bio-Works is an Uppsala-based manufacturer of chromatography resins, an advanced purification tool that makes the development and manufacture of new biological drugs possible. The company was founded in 2006, and today Bio-Works’ next-generation, agarose-based products, ”WorkBeads”, are used to purify proteins, peptides and other biomolecules, resulting in purer therapies and safer diagnostics.

Read more at bio-works.com 

Kontigo Care – a digital revolution in addiction care

Previct is a digital platform for efficient and successful addiction treatment. The therapist receives reports about the patient’s wellbeing and sobriety in real-time, predicting relapses before they occur.

Previct also enables faster and more frequent interactions with the patient, and makes it possible for the patient’s family to assist in the treatment. The healthcare provider gain invaluable knowledge while the patient receives daily behavioral therapy, a path leading to deeper and more constructive treatment sessions.

Ridgeview Instruments – understanding drug-target interactions

Ridgeview Instruments provides LigandTracer® instruments, TraceDrawer® evaluation software and Education to generate insights on biological interactions with live cells. Our products are typically used to improve the design of protein-based therapeutics and target specific PET/SPECT tracers.

Ridgeview Instruments is built from the ground up without public investor, has a strong research focus and sustainable growth for over 15 years and has instruments in over 25 countries worldwide.

In this podcast, Jos Buijs, CEO, and Sina Bondza, Principal scientist, talk about company culture, business strategy and the way they work in a collaborative manner with both industry and academia.

A Digital Take on STUNS Life science

Digitalization has been a hot topic that has been accelerated by the recent pandemic, making us rethink the way we work. The knock-on effects have led to digital business transformations in the life sciences such as digital health apps that enable a more holistic healthcare and digital research & development for accelerated research.

Listen more to hear why this trend is important to STUNS!

Rarity Bioscience – Radically improving cancer diagnostics

Rarity Bioscience has developed an ultrasensitive and multiplex technology for mutation detection in liquid biopsies, meaning that we can detect down to 1 mutation in 100,000 healthy cells, which is up to 100 times more sensitive than current technology. And perhaps the best part, the assays are run using existing instruments already available in every hematology lab.

We provide the sensitive and cost-efficient tools needed to replace conventional costly and painful tissue biopsies with blood samples to enable early detection of cancer relapse and treatment response.

Rarity is funded by experienced Uppsala entrepreneurs and researchers, combining previously successful technologies in an ingenious and beautiful way.

Monitoring made Accessible

The Cavidi BOLD add-on technology makes highly reliable, incredibly sensitive biomarker detection accessible to all researchers and clinicians globally. The technology requires no specialized equipment or expensive investments. In the lab this will help researchers and drug development teams get to market sooner with life-saving innovations.

The Cavidi goal is to democratise ultrasensitive detection.

Making the world a little better, one analysis at a time

When animal owners thought it was complicated and slow to send in samples for parasitological analysis, Vidilab solved the problem by developing kollamasken, one of the earliest sample kits on the market, aimed directly for the consumer. kollamasken is a sampling kit containing everything the animal owner needs to easily collect, package and send the sample to the laboratory. On the outside of the box the laboratory address and pre-paid postage is printed, making it even easier for the consumer.

The founders, knowing how worrying it can be to wait for an answer, decided early on that they would work hard to make the wait time as short as possible for the client. Today most samples are analyzed and a result sent out to the client the same day as the sample arrives at the lab.

Building robust systems that cut down on unnecessary waiting periods but without sacrificing quality became one of the most important guiding principles for the company. To show their commitment to quality, Vidilab decided early on to get accredited by SWEDAC (Swedish Board for Accreditation and Conformity Assessment).

As a company working close to researchers and scientists, Vidilab knows the importance of staying at the forefront of research. Vidilab has their own Research & Development department working on using the latest research to help their customers get the correct answer to their analysis, faster and easier than ever.

We meet Johan Sundström-the Curious Researcher. Johan shares his thoughts on interdisciplinary work, free will, and paradigm shifts.

We meet Christel Bergström-the Research Leader. Christel shares how she balances her work and how she blows off some steam, as the researcher-entrepreneur-professor-program director she is.

We meet Håkan Engqvist-the Inventor. Håkan shares his view on making research ideas into commercial success.

We meet Ulf Landegren – one of Uppsala Preminent figures. Ulf shares his story from his early days to this view on commercializing research.

We meet Sara Mangsbo – the Super Entrepreneur. Sara shares her motivations and rationale behind the decisions she has made in her career – in a very thoughtful way.