It was a tie – GEDEA and SIGRID both win the Startup Challenge Award at Nordic Life Science Days 2018

Gedea Biotech and Sigrid Therapeutics were selected winners by a live audience on the first day of Nordic Life Science Days, the largest partnering conference for the global life science industry in the Nordics. Acuru Pharma, another company emerging from the Nordic life science ecosystem, took third place. No less then 166 delegates took part in the voting.

Both Anette Säfholm from Gedea Biotech and Sana Alajmovic from Sigrid Therapeutics shouted “wow!” when they were called up on stage and were presented as the winners.

The team at Gedea Biotech is developing an antibiotic-free and safe treatment of vaginal infections and Sigrid Therapeutics are working on a medical device for treatment of pre-diabetes.

Jennie Ekbeck, CEO of Umeå Biotech Incubator from this year’s co-organizers of the live pitch event was impressed with the companies’ efforts:

– Hearing these twelve diverse and brave startups makes me confident that life sciences in the Nordics is on the rise and we’ll keep growing stronger together, she says.

In May 2018, an expert jury selected the 12 startups to pitch live on stage during this challenge.

Acuru Pharma who also reached the podium is exploiting transporter proteins for diagnosis and treatment of kidney cancer and like all 12 companies, they all aim for the global market for their innovations.

The organizers thank the event sponsor Pfizer for their support.

About Startup Challenge

The startup challenge is an event showcasing the best and brightest startups currently emerging from the Nordic life science ecosystem. Based on their video contributions, the best 12 have been selected to pitch live in front of a qualified audience of life science industry decision makers and investors.

About Nordic Life Science Days

NLSDays is a SwedenBIO event, produced by Bionordic. Nordic Life Science Days has grown rapidly since its launch in 2012 to become the largest Nordic partnering conference for the global life science industry. This year, almost 1300 delegates from 40 countries are attending the meeting.

About Umeå Biotech Incubator

Umeå Biotech Incubator is Sweden’s only life science incubator established by rebellious scientists. Today we have grown up to become a state-of-the-art biotech incubator offering facilities, know-how and financing. We have been named one of Europe’s top 15 biotech incubators and we are aiming to become the best.

At UBI we offer internationally competitive services for verification and development of innovations. We are also a potential workplace for overseas scientists and clinicians looking to broaden their career path in Sweden.