Skip to main content
< Back to news
From left to right: Albert Garcia-Pujadas, Alfons Nonell-Canals, Marta Príncep and Xavier Castells, members of the Executive Board of Mind the Byte.
 04.08.2015

Mind the Byte granted funding from the SME Instrument from the European Union

Mind the Byte –a company specializing in the provision of services and solutions in computational drug design based at Parc Cientific de Barcelona (PCB)– has been selected in the last call of the SME Instrument of the European Commission and will receive 50,000 Euros to carry out the feasibility study of the Datanimbus project with the ultimate goal of bringing it to market. To present this and other projects in which the company has engaged recently, the start-up has organized a seminar to be held on 15 September at  PCB, where it will also be presenting a crowdfunding campaign in the amount of 100,000 Euros to boost the international marketing of its services and products.

 

The Datanimbus project involves the use of Big Data techniques for processing large amounts of omics data (such as genomics and proteomics) and its application in personalized medicine. The founder and CEO of Mind the Byte, Alfons Nonell-Canals, does not hide his satisfaction with this recognition: “It is the result of perseverance and good work. We are happy to go ahead with the project and see how our commitment to cloud technology and Big Data is on the right track. “Nonell-Canals also considers that the support received from the ACCIÓ, the Catalan Agency for Business Competitiveness, is key to being competitive in this type of calls.

Under the Horizó 2020 (H2020) framework, the European Commission is encouraging the participation of SMEs in research and development projects in innovative fields such as life sciences and health. One funding routes being implemented is  the SME instrument, which consists of three phases: analysis of technical and economic feasibility, project development and support innovation in marketing.

Once the first phase of the project is rolled out, Mind the Byte plans to apply to the second phase endowed with a funding between 0.5 and 2 million Euros.

The Generalitat de Catalunya, through ACCIÓ – the agency for business competitiveness- advices and supports Catalan companies in the H2020 calls, among which is Mind the Byte. According to Mariona Sanz, director of the Business Innovation Unit ACCIÓ “Catalonia is one of the European that is participating the most in this program, which has a budget of 3,000 million Euros. It is an extremely competitive program with success rates below 10%”.

Since its creation, Mind the Byte has relied heavily on European funding to develop large research projects. In September 2013, it became a  partner in Translink, where it developed new molecules to avoid rejection of animal-origin cardiac valves. It also participates at COST Action Chemical Approaches to Targeting Drug Resistance in Cancer Stem Cells (2012-2016) and in Challenging organic syntheses inspired by nature – from natural products chemistry to drug discovery (2015-2019).

Presentation of new projects and crowdfunding campaign at PCB

On 15 September Mind the Byte will be hosting a workshop at the Parc Cientific de Barcelona (PCB) where it will present the company´s new projects and a capital increase to be channeled through a crowdfunding campaign.

Among the latest most relevant initiatives of the start-up, of note is the collaboration with the research group on cell and molecular bases of Huntington´s disease at the University of Barcelona (UB) headed by Jordi Alberch, professor at the Department of Cell Biology, Immunology and Neurosciences and vice rector of Research, Innovation and Transfer at the UB. this joint initiative will enable Mind the Byte to make available to the scientific community the computational development of new molecules against this neurodegenerative disorder.

As regards the crowdfunding campaign –coordinated by Crowdcube. The goal of the company is to raise between 100,000 and 150,000 euros and allocate them to research and development of new Clouden tools, the SaaS  modality for computational drug design, a system of which Mind the Byte is a pioneer worldwide in the field of Chemoinformatics and Bioinformatics.

The workshop- moderated by Oriol Sans,  manager of the Finance Divison at ACCIÓ, will feaure the participation of Jordi Alberch; Alfons Nonell-Canals, founder and CEO of Mind the Byte; Albert Garcia-Pujadas,  member of the Board of Trustees of Mind the Byte and CEO of Foxize School; and Pepe Borrell, CEO of Crowdcube.

The event will be held at the Sala Dolors Aleu i Riera at Parc Científic de Barcelona at 17.30 h. On closing, a cocktail will be offered to all attendees.

<Advance reservation is required. Please email: info@mindthebyte.com