Life science hotlist: Biolamina towards a paradigm shift

Biolamina produces products for stem cell research and is one of the companies included on the list of Stockholm’s hottest life science companies. We asked Kristian Tryggvason, CEO, to tell us more about Biolamina as a company. 

”Our business focuses on products that solve the long prevailed technical problems associated with stem cell culture. Culturing stem cells has been considered technically very difficult and the use of stem cells is the key for curing for instance diabetes. In diabetes treatment, stem cells are used to replace the patient’s own insulin producing cells that do not function any more.

The reason why BioLamina’s products have been so successful is because they mimic the body and provides an environment that stem cells and other cell types have in the body. It’s the only product on the market that supports the growth of stem cells and other primary cells outside the body in an efficient and reliable way, which is needed in cell therapy.

”Biolamina’s vision is clear: we want to help make a paradigm shift in medicine by providing tools that will enable cell therapy to replace surgery, pills and injections in certain diseases.

”We already have some 300 customers buying our tools and we are now looking for more capital in order to break through to become the market leader in our field. We want our products to become standard in the industry. We are now increasing our sales and marketing efforts and scaling up our production methods for clinical use so the product can be included in clinical trials, both here in Sweden and elsewhere.”

Why do you think BioLamina has been included on Stockholm-Uppsala Life Science Investment Hotlist?

”Human embryonic stem cells were first discovered 15 years ago, but not much has happened since. Only a handful of clinical studies have reached phase 1 in their testing process. It’s been very difficult to control the cells and make them behave exactly as you want them to. But we have the tools to do just that and to make the process simpler. We believe that our tools will make cell therapy a reality, and that is what makes us very unique,” says Kristian Tryggvason.

What are your thoughts on the Stockholm-Uppsala region as a place to run a life science business?

”There is a great amount of competence within the life science field in this region, which is a huge plus for us and our business. There is also both human and financial capital available for the life science and biotech industries and also several people with previous success stories that inspire and help us grow.

”There’s no problem finding competent researchers and staff in the region, which is great for us as we continue to grow the business. It’s also very useful to be so near so many succesful companies, both within the life science field and other areas such as IT. We’ve learnt a lot from the IT industry, we sell out products online and use the web as our main marketing channel. We listen to people who have been successful, how they have developed their product offering. This is knowledge that is not specific to a particular industry, but can be applied to any sales process.”

Where are you in five years?

”We’ll be a global leader within the primary cell culture reagents, we have to make that happen. In five years we’ll probably have a couple of hundred employees. We want to be big!”