The CRG is recognised by the National Research Awards of Catalonia

The Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) has received the National Innovation Award for the Creation of a Science-Based Company, a new category within the National Research Awards of Catalonia.

Announced by the Government of Catalonia and the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI), the awards are a social recognition of science as well promoting the activity of researchers, funders, businessmen, entrepreneurs and communicators in Catalonia.

This year, the Government of Catalonia and the FCRI have recognised the CRG for creating Pulmobiotics S.L, a preclinical company that uses synthetic biology to develop new treatments and vaccines for various types of lung diseases.

“This award shows that quality, curiosity-driven research, can result in the creation of a company that not only generates wealth and jobs, but will also develop new therapies for lung diseases,” says ICREA Research Professor Luis Serrano, co-founder of Pulmobiotics SL and Director of the Center for Genomic Regulation. "Hopefully this recognition will serve to encourage entrepreneurs who want to take risks to pursue innovative ideas."

“Pulmobiotics has been the result of many years of teamwork. We have worked in unison to bring science to society, with the aim of providing solutions for intractable diseases using synthetic biology,” says María Lluch, co-founder and scientific director of Pulmobiotics. “Making the leap from the CRG to the company has been a professional and personal challenge. The unique opportunity was only made possible thanks to the support of the CRG, ICREA and our investors, Invivo Ventures, who have seen the potential of our technology and its future growth and development prospects.”

The goal of Pulmobiotics is to develop new treatments to combat lung diseases such as ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a type of lung infection that affects hundreds of thousands of hospitalized patients connected to mechanical ventilation machines. VAP has a mortality rate between 3 and 17%.

Pulmobiotics will develop novel treatments to combat diseases such as VAP by designing attenuated bacteria that deliver therapeutic agents, one of the most promising applications in the emerging field of synthetic biology.

The company was founded in April 2020, obtaining 2,000,000 euros of seed financing from Invivo Ventures, based in Barcelona. One of Pulmobiotics' goals is to develop a product that reduces the use of antibiotics to treat VAP and is ready to be tested in patients by 2023.

Pulmobiotics is the fourth spin-off created at the CRG. Previously, companies such as QGenomics, a genomic analysis service, Microomics, a biotechnology company specializing in microbiome analysis, and Seqera Labs, a digital infrastructure for data analysis, have been created.