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Catalan Minister of Health Manel Balcells during the press conference (Photo: Arnau Carbonell).
 08.11.2022

Biocat to coordinate future Advanced Therapies Hub of Catalonia

Catalan Minister of Health Manel Balcells announced in a press conference today that the Government will be creating the Centre Nacional de Teràpies Avançades (CNTA), featuring a key element of the future Advanced Therapies Hub of Catalonia, which will be coordinated by Biocat -from its headquarters to the Barcelona Science Park- in order to secure the whole value chain needed to develop these technologies, from generation to access to the healthcare system and market.

The Centre Nacional de Teràpies Avançades (CNTA) will become a facility that will work to connect the industrial fabric and the generation of advanced therapies under the framework of the public health and research and innovation systems. The Blood and Tissue Bank will be in charge of coordinating the shaping of the new centre, which will present its operating plan in February 2023.

The new centre will help boost hospitals’ capacity to do clinical trials on these therapies and establish the process for development and industrial scale-up. Advanced therapies, from a regulatory standpoint, are drugs for human use based on cell (cell therapy), genes (gene therapy) or tissues (tissue engineering) that regenerate tissue, treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and treat cancer, among other things.

During the press conference, the Catalan Minister of Health Manel Balcells also announced that Biocat will be coordinating the future Hub of Advanced Therapies of Catalonia. “Also, to carry out the project, Biocat will be in charge of identifying and aligning all the public and private stakeholders in the BioRegion to secure the whole value chain needed to develop these technologies, from generation to access to the healthcare system and market.”

According to Biocat CEO Robert Fabregat, the Advanced Therapies Hub has great international potential because “the global trend is to make a clear commitment and investment in developing personalized, advanced therapies based on bioengineering processes, and Catalonia has the essential ingredients to be a leader in this field.” The Biocat CEO highlighted that the organization will also work to promote the strategic initiatives the system needs, searching for the funding necessary to carry them out (e.g. current ISCIII and CDTI calls) while promoting and ramping up public-private partnership to reach deals with pharmaceutical companies on industrial development.

» For further information: Biocat website [+]