By the end of this year, the Skolkovo Foundation plans to sign a cooperation agreement in biotechnology and medicine with the scientific centres of Siberian branches of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (RAMS), federal government-owned medical institutions, Novosibirsk innovation entrepreneurs and international universities.
Executive Director of the Biomedicine Cluster Igor Goryanin announced while on a business trip to Novosibirsk,
“We hope to sign an agreement similar to the one signed in the Urals to establish a public-private partnership. Its participants will include Skolkovo, the Siberian Branch of the RAS, the Siberian Branch of the RAMS, the Meshalkin Research Institute of Circulation Pathology, international universities, innovators and entrepreneurs. We hope that the regional government will also support this initiative.”
Goryanin noted that Novosibirsk is one of the top regions in Russia for modern biotechnology development, particularly in medicine.
According to him, collaboration and joint research with the Skolkovo Foundation in the Novosibirsk region will be in areas such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer, brain biochemistry, neuromedicine, and infrastructural development in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics and metabolomics. Also of major importance is the development of infrastructure for a wide range of preclinical trials on SPF (specific pathogen-free) animals.
He named the Meshalkin Research Institute of Circulation Pathology, the International Tomography Center of the Siberian Branch of the RAS, the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the RAS, the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the RAS and the Vector Biotechnology Centre of Rospotrebnadzor as scientific establishments of interest to the Foundation.
“In Novosibirsk, we will create new mechanisms for collaboration between organisations from various branches that work with modern biomedical high technologies and that we expect to deliver breakthrough projects in biomedicine and the biotechnology industry,” said Goryanin.
He explained that one specific cooperation opportunity is a network expansion of the Centre for Collective Use established at Skolkovo, which will support the Foundationing of similar regional centres that have already had breakthrough projects.
“On Skolkovo’s part, we offer our expertise, connections with globally renowned scientists, access and connections to major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies abroad, and the transfer of experience with the technological implementation of innovations. That’s how we create a support network for innovation,” Goryanin said.
He also made note of Skolkovo’s interest in projects related to cell biology, genetics and biotechnology. Among other projects, new superproducers will be jointly developed to replace energy-intensive chemical production processes with more efficient biotechnological ones. Other projects in the works have to do with new approaches in regenerative medicine and tomography for studying humans and animals (genetic models of human pathologies) in normal and pathological conditions, including neuromedicine projects.
“Foundationing will be based on the Skolkovo platform; this is small business financing. It will be the basis for supporting scientists and scientific centers in Novosibirsk,” he added.
Background information:
About the Skolkovo Foundation
The Skolkovo Foundation for Development of the Centre of Research and Commercialising of New Technologies was created at the initiative of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in September 2010. Its goal is to mobilise Russia’s resources in modern applied research and create a favorable environment for academic pursuits in five key areas of technological development: energy and energy efficiency, space, biomedicine, nuclear technologies and IT. The project calls for establishing the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SIST), research institutions, a business incubator, a technology transfer and commercialisation centere, representative offices of foreign companies and R&D centres, residential quarters and social infrastructure, as well as for eventually spreading the effective system to other innovation regions in Russia. Special laws governing Skolkovo give its residents special economic preferences.
Visit the Foundation's official web site at http://i-gorod.com