During the last weeks, a team of Ascenion’s industry liaison and technology mangers has been on the road to foster industry relations and market the company’s portfolio of IP assets.
In October, they joined a delegation of European biotech clusters on their trip to Asia: first to Osaka, then to the BioJapan conference in Yokohama. ‘Personal contacts and first-hand insights are indispensable for gaining ground in Asian markets’, Esther Lange, Industry Liaison Manager at Ascenion, comments. Japan is the second largest healthcare market and therefore highly relevant to Ascenion and its partner institutes. With Japan’s ageing population, life science innovations become increasingly important to Japanese companies and public organizations, as reflected by their growing interest in collaborating with European partners. ‘We were able to present our portfolio to many key biotech and pharma players in Japan and to initiate or deepen a significant number of high-level contacts.’
In early November, the team participated in BIO-Europe, Europe’s leading life science partnering conference attracting almost 3,700 delegates from 65 countries. With many pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings plus several more ad-hoc encounters, Ascenion was able to significantly expand the visibility of its partners’ technologies among decision makers from the international industry. ‘It was an extremely effective event, yielding several valuable partnering opportunities which we will be following up on over the next months,’ Esther Lange comments.