On the 3rd of November, representatives from international pharmaceutical companies were invited to Luxembourg for a one-day guided visit of the country’s main biomedical research facilities, IBBL (Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg), the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) and the LCSB (Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine).
This event, initiated by the Ministry of Economy and organised by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and the ‘Association Pharmaceutique Luxembourgeoise’ (APL), was an opportunity to present the recent evolutions of the national biomedical research landscape and to promote new synergies with potential industrial partners.
The visit started in the morning at IBBL (Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg). The participants were offered a tour through the premises and were introduced to the research activities and service offer of the biobank. In her presentation, IBBL’s CEO, Catherine Larue, emphasised IBBL’s unique selling point of combining biobanking with services and biospecimen research, embedded in a certified/accredited environment.
Next, the company representatives were introduced to the activities of the three research departments of the Luxembourg Institute of Health. The Department of Oncology presented its work on drug treatments, cancer immunotherapy and biomarker discovery. The subsequent introduction of the Department of Population Health focused on the implication of LIH in clinical research. In the afternoon, following a walking lunch at the House of BioHealth in Esch-sur-Alzette, the Department of Infection and Immunity presented its projects in the domain of vaccination, immunotherapy, epigenetics and immune systems biology.
The programme continued at the LCSB of the University of Luxembourg. LCSB highlighted its projects that could be of interest for a collaboration with industry, such as microbiome analysis, ‘brain on a chip’ and the national Parkinson’s disease study NCER-PD. The programme ended in the early evening with a social gathering, which surely stimulated fruitful discussions on possible public-private collaborations.
Photo: Mario Gratz, Director General for Research, Intellectual Property and New Technologies from the Ministry of Economy, giving a speech at the House of BioHealth.