Caixa Impulse Programme: Half of the portuguese projects selected by the “la Caixa” Foundation are by NOVA researchers

Projects by Ana Pina from NOVA FCT, Mónica Serrano, from ITQB NOVA and Maria de Guadalupe Cabral, from NOVA Medical School, have been selected by CaixaImpulse, an intensive 18-month accelerator programme for the creation of new products and companies in the health and life sciences sectors.

Specifically, the CaixaImpulse programme aims to support universities and research projects that want to transfer a proprietary or protected innovation from research to the market, either as a spin-off or as a transfer agreement, and whose value proposition needs to be validated and developed.

The proposals include:

• The development of bio-batteries inspired by collagen as a source of energy for electronic devices for the skin, such as the project led by Ana Pina, with the participation of researchers Felipe Conzuelo (ITQB NOVA), Catarina Baptista and Leonor Morgado from NOVA FCT, and also researcher Erin Tranfield from the Gulbenkian Science Institute.
• A cheaper, faster and more versatile alternative to PCR for pathogen detection; this is the case of the project led by Mónica Serrano, resulting from the collaboration between the Microbial Development Laboratory, led by Adriano Henriques, and the Yeast Molecular Biology Laboratory, led by Catarina Pimentel, also from ITQB NOVA.
• and the identification of a new type of biomarker and therapeutic target to combat breast cancer, a project led by Maria Guadalupe Cabral, who heads a multidisciplinary team that includes doctors Sofia Braga and Telma Martins, from the Prof. Dr. Fernando Fonseca Hospital and CUF Descobertas.