CaixaImpulse celebrates 10 years with a total of 232 health innovation projects
A total of 232 biomedical and technological research projects promoted in Spain and Portugal, 50 spin-offs created, 4 innovation licences for companies and more than 19 clinical trials conducted. These are some of the achievements made in a decade by CaixaImpulse, the call for grants for health innovation projects organised by the ”la Caixa” Foundation in collaboration with Criteria Bio Ventures.
The support of CaixaImpulse has enabled numerous biomedical and technological research projects to make the leap from the laboratory to the patient, transcending the academic sphere to become solutions that improve people's lives.
Àngel Font, Deputy Director General of Research and Grants at the ”la Caixa” Foundation, and Pablo Cironi, Director of Criteria Bio Ventures, took stock of these first 10 years. The event, held at the Palau Macaya, was also attended by Alicia Martínez Piñeiro, CEO of Time is Brain; José Carlos Pulido, CEO of Inrobics; and Rubén Molina, CEO of Innitius, all of whom are beneficiaries of CaixaImpulse, as well as Laura Sampietro-Colom, Deputy Director of Innovation at Hospital Clínic Barcelona and mentor for the programme.
The programme facilitates the conversion of advances made in the academic world — hospitals, universities and research centres — into real solutions for patients. Since its creation in 2015, the ”la Caixa” Foundation has allocated €24.8 million to support the transfer of scientific knowledge to the market through CaixaImpulse, which accompanies health innovation projects from their early stages and provides them with resources and training so that they can move forward with confidence into new phases of development, thereby helping to bridge the gap between science and society.
CaixaImpulse encourages projects to mature during their time in the programme so that they are then able to attract external funding to bring innovation from the laboratory to the patient. Since its creation, the projects that have passed through CaixaImpulse have raised more than €180 million in additional funding, multiplying the funds allocated by the ”la Caixa” Foundation to this area by seven. These figures demonstrate the programme's potential to strengthen the biomedical and technological innovation ecosystem in healthcare.
The projects selected by CaixaImpulse to date reflect a wide range of thematic and business areas, including medical technologies, therapies, diagnostics and digital health. The selected projects cover a broad spectrum of healthcare challenges, including oncology (62), neuroscience (37), infectious diseases (33), cardiovascular and metabolic diseases (15), and other areas (85) that include, among others, eye, kidney, autoimmune, intestinal and lung diseases, and clinical diagnostic methodologies.
This diversity not only responds to current scientific priorities, but also reflects the programme's commitment to promoting transformative solutions that address unmet medical needs and improve patients' quality of life.
The call for proposals is being carried out in collaboration with Criteria Bio Ventures, CriteriaCaixa's venture capital fund specialising in biotechnology and health sciences. In Portugal, where 32 projects have been supported, the call is being carried out in collaboration with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), part of the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education.
Financial support, mentoring and training
Currently, the selected projects can follow a funding pathway of up to three phases, with support that can be extended for up to five years. Researchers can access the programme at any of these phases depending on the maturity of their project; when they reach specific development milestones and following an assessment by the evaluation committee, they can move on to subsequent phases with increased funding. In total, a project can receive up to €700,000 if it completes the entire programme.
CaixaImpulse supports biomedical projects in the field of innovation and transfer to help researchers validate their assets and define their exploitation and valorisation strategy with the aim of bringing projects closer to the market. Therefore, in addition to financial support, researchers also have access to mentoring, consulting and support from international experts in different areas of the innovation ecosystem.
The funding criteria are based on the scientific quality and novelty of the assets, the medical need addressed by the project, the suitability of the team, the feasibility of implementation and the potential social impact and business model.
During its first 10 years, CaixaImpulse has consolidated a comprehensive innovation support model and, in addition to financial support for projects, has offered more than 5,500 hours of personalised mentoring and more than 870 hours of specialised training to more than 300 entrepreneurs, including project leaders and other team members.
The programme has a network of more than 20 renowned mentors, including Laura Sampietro, Deputy Director of Innovation at Hospital Clínic; Andrés G. Fernández, founder of AF Biopharma Consulting and CDO at Nanobots Therapeutics; José Luis Cabero, consultant at Symbiokraft, former CEO at AELIX Therapeutics, VP at AstraZeneca and member of the advisory board at BioAvance Capital; Tamara Maes, founder of Oryzon Genomics, the first Spanish biotechnology company to go public; Raül Zurita, Head of Innovation and Business Development at the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute; and Roger Gomis, group leader at IRB Barcelona and founder of Inbiomotion.
The team of mentors also includes entrepreneurs such as Alfonso Carnicero, CEO of ABLE Human Motion, which has democratised lightweight exoskeleton technology, and Beatriz Llamusí, scientific director and co-founder of Arthex Biotech, which has developed an RNA therapy for myotonic dystrophy. Following their experience as entrepreneurial scientists and after receiving support from CaixaImpulse, both now contribute as mentors to new projects. In addition to the mentors, the entrepreneurial scientists have a network of more than 600 experts in different areas of the innovation process — from intellectual property protection to scaling and production processes and market access strategy, among others — with whom they can collaborate to define their project.
The support of this network and the training received have been key to transforming ideas into real solutions, with four innovations already licensed to companies, demonstrating the programme's ability to generate effective technology transfer.
The impact of CaixaImpulse is also reflected in the creation of more than 285 skilled jobs and the direct improvement in the health of more than 3,180 patients treated in clinical trials promoted by the projects. In total, 35 hospitals have participated in these studies, strengthening the connection between research and clinical practice, i.e., promoting innovative research that not only generates knowledge but also social and economic value.
