Perspectum Diagnostics, a success story of the true strategic value of European funding for Biotech and Medtech SMEs

Europe has vast amounts of funding available for biotech and medtech SMEs, both in dedicated programmes for SMEs (e.g. the SME Instrument, Eurostars and the SME Innovation Associate) as well as a range of R&D programmes where the involvement of SMEs is crucial (e.g. the Personalised Medicine topics and FET-OPEN).

The story of Perspectum Diagnostics, as narrated by its CEO, is an excellent example of what European funds can mean for a company:

Dr. Rajarshi Banerjee, CEO of Perspectum Diagnostics (Oxford, UK)

The EUR 3.4M Horizon 2020 SME instrument that we have recently been granted will be pivotal in the marketing of LiverMultiScan, showing how we can add value to health care systems with our novel MR-imaging based pathway for the assessment of liver disease. The grant will help us to (1) validate the cost-effectiveness and added value of LiverMultiScan in the chronic liver disease care pathway via a randomised multi-centre health economic study and (2) demonstrate the high sensitivity and specificity of LiverMultiScan as a medical support tool for stratifying patients at high risk of liver transplant rejection via a prospective clinical trial. While we were planning these studies anyway, this grant will expedite their execution and drastically increases their scale, bringing together a world-leading consortium of experts in liver disease. The results will help us to ensure reimbursement of our service, buy-in of hepatologists and public healthcare providers, and ultimately reduce the burden of liver disease.

ttopstart has been extremely valuable in scoping the project, developing the application, encouraging us to focus on where we added the most value to the diagnostic pathway, coordinating the proposal preparation and describing the commercial and healthcare potential of our breakthrough innovation. The consultancy has become a partnership, and we have successfully worked on another EU application since.

So how to leverage these European funds for the benefit of your company? The key strategic reasons our clients opt for European funding include:

• Build strategic collaborations with industrial partners and key academic opinion leaders and ensure pan-European visibility (e.g. Eurostars, Fast-track to Innovation);
• Leverage private investments (e.g. Eurostars);
• Expedite product development and market introduction and increase the geographic scale of marketing (SME Instrument and Fast-track to Innovation);
• Increase the power and scale of clinical trials (Personalised Medicine topics, SME Innovation Associate, SME Instrument and Fast-track to Innovation);
• Explore new horizons (e.g. FET-OPEN, European Industrial Doctorate training (ITN-EID) and the SME Innovation Associate).

So, what is your reason? We would appreciate your comments below.

Jasper Levink MScPartner ttopstart