A key European player in biotechnologies!
Cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease are major public health issues on a human, sanitary, social, and economic level. Diagnosing illnesses, devising appropriate therapies for each patient, and facilitating their care requires efficient and adequate tools.
In Europe, Switzerland has established itself as a prime location for developing activities in the biotechnology and laboratory technologies sector.
The quality of its infrastructure, level of competitiveness, quality of life, and flexibility of its labor laws – associated with a pool of qualified personnel trained in its universities and institutes of higher education – make it an ideal environment.
In the canton of Vaud, the wealth and diversity of laboratory technologies, both at academic and private institutes, feeds into an ecosystem that promotes high-level innovation.
The concentration and burgeoning of competencies in engineering, microfluidics, optics, biomaterials, and molecular biology has generated a unique synergy for the research and development of new analysis and diagnostic procedures.
Companies with significant potential, such as Lunaphore and Abionic, have emerged from this fertile environment.
For example, the Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering (LSCB) at the EPFL can be seen as a pioneer in this field. It attempts to discover the mechanisms that govern the fate of stem cells and control the microenvironment surrounding them to encourage them, among other things, to form mini-organs.
