Vienna, November 4th, 2013 – A group led by two Ferentis founders, Prof. May Griffith, of Linköping University (Project coordinator) and Dr. Ramunas Valiokas from the Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology (Lithuanian Partner), received the Nanomedicine Award in the regenerative medicine category at the Nanomedicine Panel at BIO-Europe conference in Vienna, November 4th 2013. The award was for the European Nanomedicine ERAnet project, “Integrative nano-Composites And Regeneration of the Eye (I-CARE)”, a regenerative medicine‐based treatment for Corneal Herpes Simplex Keratitis (HSK), that simultaneously treats the disease while regenerating the damaged cornea. Ferentis is a spinoff company, which has resulted from the I-CARE project.
“We have received a lot of exceptional applications for the Nanomedicine Award, with 23 candidates coming from all over the world and from different horizons and application areas. It has been incredibly hard for the judging committee to select the winners that are excelling in their innovative nanomedicine approaches”, said Laurent Levy, chairman of the Award review board and vice-chairman of the ETPN. “It is a great pool of examples to show the true potential of nanomedicine in providing important solutions for currently unmet medical needs and a major opportunity to enhance the synergies of the field with the pharmaceutical industry, a crucial stakeholder in the development of products towards the patients.”
“For the I-CARE team, the Nanomedicine Award 2013 is an acknowledgement of our hard work and multidisciplinary approach to successfully extending regenerative medicine approaches to restoring organs that are failing due to immunopathologic causes, in this case, corneas with herpes simplex keratitis, the leading cause of infectious blindness worldwide. We hope that we will successfully bridge the translational gap from clinical need to clinical trials, allowing us to continue to work together and with others within the nanomedicine community in further European projects”, said May Griffith, Professor at Linköping University, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine.
