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The Leitat Technological receives the 2009 BMW Initiative Award

By 18 de March de 2009November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 18.03.2009

The Leitat Technological receives the 2009 BMW Initiative Award

The Technological Centre, which is located at PCB through its Biomedical Division, has won the fifth edition of the , a prize which grants 30,000 euros to the winner. This award is given every year to individuals, companies and organizations whose professional activity stands out for fostering creativity and innovation, two values the brand seeks to promote. The award presentation ceremony was held on the night of March 12 at the Catalonia National Museum of Art and was hosted by Jordi Carnes, mayor lieutenant of the Treasury and Economic Promotion Departments of the Barcelona City Hall, and Eduardo Villaverde, president of the BMW Group Spain.

This honour has been granted to Leitat for “focusing its efforts on R+D+I, and for developing innovative services and products with excellent value, foreseeing and acting in accordance with the global changes and needs that have taken place throughout its more than 100 years of experience”, as stated in the jury’s act. The objective of this award is for the winner to utilize the prize money for a project of interest for the city.

Aside from the winner, the jury has selected three other finalists, and, in order to favour citizen participation, this year it has been decided to present an honorary mention of this Award through a public online vote, which has been awarded to the Corporació Sanitària Parc Taulí, a consortium of local healthcare centres and hospitals.

The jury of the fifth edition of the BMW Initiative Awards has been comprised of representatives from Barcelona Activa, ACC1Ó, FAD; Foment del Treball, Barcelona Science Park and BMW, amongst others, as well as from the Private Foundation for Oncological Studies and Research (FERO) and the Music Technology Research Group (MTG), previous winners of these awards.

Leitat is a Technological Centre that aims to provide services to companies from the industrial sector, adding a technological value to both products and processes. Focused on Research, Development and Innovation (R+D+i) tasks, Leitat services have a clearly adaptive and progressive orientation and vocation to face constant market changes. Since its foundation in 1906, the Leitat Technological Centre has evolved from the textile industry towards several different sectors such as aeronautics, the automotive and transportation industry, construction, energy improvement, resource optimization, residue reduction, protection equipment, industrial chemistry and cancer research.

The basic objective of Leitat’s Biomedical Division, which is located at the Barcelona Science Park, is to identify new molecular targets and drugs for cancer treatment. It also aims to provide a wide range of services to the pharmaceutical industry and related companies in order to analyse the anticancer activities of new compounds and/or identify new indications in oncology of known compounds. Furthermore, it offers clients and collaborators the generation of customized monoclonal antibodies for several applications, ranging from basic research to diagnosis and therapy. Another objective is to establish collaboration projects with healthcare centres and biomedical research institutes, both public and private, aimed at improving existing protocols for cancer treatment.