Spain's Biotech Revolution

Developing Experience

Credibility is crucial in this emerging field. The company Advancell began when its university-based founders realized that their services in cell-based reagents were in high demand. Today the company has three main areas of operation: one in developing new pharmaceuticals, another in testing, and a third in nanomedicine. 

The company is developing a new medicine for the treatment of the orphan drug chronic linfocites leukaemia. In nanomedicine, Advancell has a treatment in the clinical stage of testing for psoriasis.

Advancell’s business model is typical of many current Spanish biotech companies: they began providing services as a way to earn money and then invested that money in research and innovation.

The business model isn’t the only typical feature of the Advancell story.  Luis Ruiz, former Advancell CEO, says his personal story reflects the experience of most others in the current generation of biotechnology entrepreneurs in Spain. He was a molecular biologist with years of experience in academia, then shifted to the local pharmaceutical industry and spent four years in business development.

“I had the rare hybrid academic and business profile that is required for managing these kinds of companies,” says Ruiz.

Of other heads of companies that started in the past decade, such as Garmendia of Genetrix and Carlos Buesa of Oryzon Genomics, Ruiz says, “All of us came from the university, at a certain point shifted to industry, and with this experience began managing biotech companies.”

 “Now there are more people with a variety of experience,” says Ruiz, but in 2000 or 2001, when the current generation of biotech business began, “not many people were willing to take the risk.” Today, though, the field has changed. He adds, “I feel a little privileged; I’m a player in something that is evolving very positively, and I’m optimistic about where it’s moving.”