Genopole strengthens its visibility for strategic audiences—researchers, entrepreneurs, international partners—through targeted communications, increased presence at major events and concrete initiatives to bring renown to its life sciences innovation ecosystem, not only in France but in Europe and across the globe.
Communication & attractiveness
Genopole grows its attractiveness by valorizing the innovations of its labs and start-ups in a multichannel communication strategy, comprising events, publications and targeted actions to draw the eyes of talents, investors and partners.
On 12 January, a decisive step was taken for the Île-de-France biotechnologies ecosystem: Genopole President Stéphane Beaudet, Genopole Chief Executive Gilles Trystram and Paris-Saclay University Vice-President of Research & Valorization Thierry Doré officialized a strategic partnership with high scientific value. The partnership aims to energize innovation in biotechnologies for health and the environment, two key sectors for addressing tomorrow's societal challenges.
By mutualizing competencies, state of the art technological platforms and dynamics for training & research, the two institutions intend to create a powerful motor for accelerating the transfer of knowledge to innovation, supporting the emergence of new collaborative models and building a solid base of shared infrastructures always ahead of the needs of the sector. The partnership signals a clear vision: make Genopole and Paris-Saclay an indispensable center of excellence for bioengineering.
Genopole: a partner for the Techinnov trade fair, a spotlight on Île-de-France innovation
With Grand Paris Sud, Genopole participated in Techinnov, a major event organized by the Essonne and Paris–Île-de-France chambers of commerce and industry. Genopole benefited from the annual trade fair to promote its accompaniment and real estate offers, not to mention its state of the art equipment highly pertinent to the objectives of France 2030. Three of Genopole's accompanied businesses, Fungu'it, Alga Biologics and Synovance, won awards in Techinnov's competition, in the fields of decarbonization, biodrugs and food alternatives. Each received a €2,000 prize presented by Essonne CCI President Patrick Rakotoson and will benefit from strengthened accompaniment.
Genopole: active participation at the Paris-Saclay SPRING event
Genopole put its biotech ecosystem in the spotlight at Paris-Saclay SPRING. In 2024, Christophe Tarabout, CEO of the Genopole start-up Vitropep, was a laureate in the Health-Biotech category of the event's SPRING 50 promotion.
Also, Genopole opened its doors for exclusive visits to its R&D centers as part of the "Innovation Tours," which gave the event's participants a chance to discover its infrastructures. The guests visited the Genopole Enterprises incubator (Essonne CCI) and SK-pharmteco's new biomanufacturing facilities.
DNA Day celebrated 25 April
The globe-spanning DNA Day commemorates two major events in the history of molecular biology: the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure in 1953 by Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick; and the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, the largest collaborative genomics research project ever done.
The event is dedicated to the promotion of advances in genetics & genomics and to issues in science and medicine.
In 2024, DNA Day was held at Genopole, a site emblematic of France's participation in the Human Genome Project via the major contributions made to it by Genethon (AFM-Téléthon's laboratory) and Genoscope, the national sequencing center.
Genopole had the privilege of welcoming Jean Weissenbach (Genoscope (CEA), French Academy of Sciences), a renowned researcher, a pioneer in the exploration and analysis of genomes and a leader in the sequencing of chromosome 14.
Genopole acts to structure a biomanufacturing sector for health in France
In 2024, Genopole increased its involvement in the development of biomanufacturing for biodrugs by way of two major events:
On 3–4 April, Genopole participated in the France Bioproduction Congress, the reference meet-up for all of the sector's public and private actors co-organized by Polepharma and Medicen Paris Région. The event brought together more than 500 professionals at the Paris-Saclay Palais des Congrès conference center in Massy. It was focused on such strategic themes as sustainable innovation, industrial acceleration and the One Health approach.
On 5 July, Genopole hosted the National Day for the Bioproduction of Biopharmaceuticals (JNBB), organized by France BioLead. The first edition of the event was open to all with the goal of spreading knowledge on issues within this essential sector for the future of innovative therapies. The day's schedule was rich in visits to businesses and labs (Genethon, Yposkesi Gingko Bioworks), presentations of projects, pitches by start-ups and talks by major sector actors.
The Genopole Partnering Week (GPW) brought close to 100 start-ups, 65 investors and 30 industrials to Paris with the objective of speeding biotech innovation in health and the environment. The event counted more than 130 B2B meetings.
Genopole Chief Executive Gilles Trystram opened the event, and Laurence Lacroix-Orio presented Upscale Bio, a new accompaniment program for the industrialization of start-ups.
A pitching competition gave a chance to shine to start-ups accompanied by Genopole or its partners such as Servier & BioLabs's Spartners incubator and Paris-Saclay's public research incubator IncubAlliance. Two prizes were awarded, one to Global Bioenergies (Environmental Impact) and one to Ispiron (Health). Both companies will receive personalized support from Genopole. The jury of partners and experts praised the quality of the presented projects.
With its participation in large-scale collaborative projects and accompaniment for the internationalization of its start-ups, Genopole is part of a European dynamic and constantly strengthening its key role in biotech innovation, on the old continent and beyond.
The COBIOE project: a new interconnection platform for European biomanufacturing
In March 2023, the "Growing Connection for Bio Ecosystems" (COBIOE) project was initiated with the objective of bringing about a common and inclusive European strategy to strengthen and interconnect the continent's health biomanufacturing sector. In January 2024, to help make that objective real, Genopole and its consortium partners officially launched a collaborative platform that, today, catalogs and maps more than 1,000 entities in the health biomanufacturing sector and counts around 100 active users. In November 2024 a community hub was established (on Jamespot) and the first work groups set in motion, focusing particularly on industrial sovereignty and technological transfer. Indeed, COBIOE intends to contribute to overcoming the numerous challenges in biomanufacturing by facilitating collaboration among all of the sector's actors and, in so doing, help ensure European sovereignty for access to innovative therapies.
1,000
Entities in the health biomanufacturing sector have been catalogued and mapped.
Coordinated by Genopole and with a total budget of €1 million, the APROVALS program is on-track since September 2024 for a two and a half year voyage.
Its objective is to develop a "regulatory sandbox" methodology to accompany the legal and technological development of companies working in cellular agriculture. Year-end 2024 was rich in advances: the field's actors were catalogued and mapped in-depth, existing regulatory sandboxes across the globe were benchmarked and initial discussions were held on the structuration of the technological value chain. In addition to Genopole, APROVALS is energized by pioneering agri-food clusters and innovation hubs from across Europe. They include EuropaBio (Belgium), VTT Technical Research Centre (Finland), Vitagora (France), Irish Bioeconomy Foundation (Irland), Campania Bioscience (Italy), Planet B.io (Netherlands) and Smile Incubator (Sweden).
The objective is to develop a "regulatory sandbox" methodology to accompany the legal and technological development of companies working in cellular agriculture.
International missions
Genopole takes start-ups to the World Health Expo Dubai
A Genopole team was in Dubai for the 50th edition of World Health Expo Dubai (formerly Arab Health), held from 29 January to 1 February 2024. The team participated both in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region's principal health conference and in the organization of a one-week bootcamp with in5 Dubai. After Cell Environnement and endogene.bio in 2023, Genopole put a spotlight on the biotech Okomera and the cleantech iUMTEK at the 2024 edition of this health technologies trade fair.
International missions
A French delegation at BIO USA
Within its mission to the BIO USA convention, held 3–6 June in San Diego (California), the Genopole team pursued three main objectives: promote Genopole accompaniment to attract new talent, highlight biocluster companies and gather information on market and regulatory tendencies. All of the world's industrial, financial and institutional actors were to be found at BIO USA. The start-ups STH Biotech and endogene.bio travelled with the Genopole team for this annual international event.
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major objectives for Genopole at the BIO USA convention.
The biocluster's missions to Japan and Singapore
Genopole was in Japan from 4 to 11 October with the primary goal of attending the BioJapan partnering event. No less than Asia's most important event for biotechnologies, BioJapan 2024 drew 17,000 visitors and nearly 1,000 exhibitors from 34 countries. Genopole seized the opportunity to grow its international network of investors and corporations and present to them such biocluster companies as Abolis and Ispiron. A month later, Genopole was back in Asia for Agri-Food Tech Expo Asia (AFTEA), held 19–21 November in Singapore. There, the mission team participated in the Asia-Europe forum on nutrition technologies, accompanied its businesses and coordinated B2B meetings.
The international renown of Genopole earns it the honor of regularly welcoming delegations from across the globe. 2024 was no exception, with visits from:
the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster (Japan) for an institutional meeting;
the Development Center for Biotechnology (Taiwan), whose representatives were accompanied by colleagues from the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs to explore biotech partnering opportunities;
the research division of the Chilean economic development agency (CORFO), in the company of the Center for Systems Biotechnology (CSB-UNAB).
Paris hosts the CEBR annual conference in May 2024
Co-organized by Genopole and Medicen Paris Region and held 14–15 May 2024, the General Annual Meeting of the Council of European BioRegions (CEBR) drew more than 50 participants representing diverse clusters and innovation ecosystems from across Europe. CEBR is a pan-European network connecting health clusters and ecosystems. Genopole is an active member of it and holds a seat on its board. CEBR bolsters knowledge transfer and partnerships between its member entities with the aims of supporting sustainable growth for health SMEs and making Europe a competitive leader in the global economy.
CEBR bolsters knowledge transfer and partnerships between its members to support sustainable growth for health SMEs.
