BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE LIFE SCIENCE REGIONS
IN JAPAN
Thanks to an exceptional and mutual collaboration between bioXclusters plus and the EU-Japan Centre, around 60 participants from nine different European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and UK) participated in the joint mission to Osaka and Yokohama which took place from 10 to 14 October 2016.
On 10th October, the delegation attended lectures and presentations given by experts about business opportunities in the Japanese healthcare sector. These were organised in cooperation with the EU Japan Centre. On the 2nd day of the mission, the delegation participated in the dedicated “European Biotech & Pharma Partnering Conference”, co-organised by Osaka Bio Headquarters (http://www.osaka-bio.jp/en) and bioXclusters plus. This conference took place at the Senri-Life Science Center in Osaka, once again with the support of the EU Japan Centre. At this conference, EU participants had the opportunity to meet with potential Japanese partners. Thanks to the Enterprise Europe Network who had set up pre-arranged meetings using the matchmaking platform (https://www.b2match.eu/EUJ-bio-pharma-BE-2016) before the event, a total of 288 B2B meetings were held with 61 Japanese companies and organisations from the Kansai region. During the last three days of the mission, the joint delegation attended the Bio Japan Expo in Yokohama. On 13th October at the Bio Cluster summit organised by the Japan Bioindustry Association (JBA), the bioXclusters plus partners introduced their initiative to Japan. As next steps in the following months, bioXclusters plus intends to build a “direct Gateway” to Japan for its European SMEs and, in this way, help to reinforce their market access and to foster and fast-track business relationships. One of its initiatives included the organisation of a dedicated “EU Japan cluster matchmaking event” that took place on the 8 November at Bio-Europe 2016 in Cologne
Please find more information on the event here.
IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
BioXclusters Plus, the European Strategic Cluster Partnership on Personalized Healthcare – co-funded by the COSME Programme of the European Union – organized a “Cluster-to-Cluster” workshop at the occasion of BIO-Europe 2016 in Cologne on 8 November. This session, built up in collaboration with the Council of European BioRegions (CEBR) and with the kind support of the EBD Group and the EU-Japan Centre, was dedicated to EU-Japan collaborations with the presentations of three major life sciences organisations in Japan. The event started with an introduction by Mr. José Freitas from the DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (EC) about the European Commission’s clusters policy. Then, speakers from the Japan Bioindustry Association (JBA), the Forum for Innovative Regenerative Medicine (FIRM) network and the Prefectural Government of the Osaka cluster gave in-depth presentations of the vibrant life science sector in Japan, in particular concerning Regenerative medicine topics. The presentations are available on the bioXclusters Plus website (http://www.bioxclusters.eu). The workshop attracted over 50 participants, mainly EU clusters managers, and was then followed by the CEBR Global Cluster Hub. At the end of the two cluster-focused events, the cluster representatives from European and Japanese regions were kindly invited to a EBD drinks reception to facilitate networking.
More details are available here.
