Press Release: Today’s breakthroughs – Tomorrow’s cures

More than 400 experts from business, science, medicine, and government as well as international investors will be gathering in Berlin for the twelfth Charité BIH Entrepreneurship Summit, which is hosted by Stiftung Charité and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH). From June 17 to 18, 2019, they will discuss medical innovations and the challenges facing tomorrow’s healthcare sector at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.


“This year we are again bringing together outstanding scientists, leading innovators, experienced entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. The Summit, which was launched by Stiftung Charité, has established itself as a successful international forum,” says Professor E. Jürgen Zöllner, an Executive Board member of Stiftung Charité. The twelfth edition of the Charité BIH Entrepreneurship Summit will focus on the following topics: artificial intelligence in healthcare; digital therapies; new global investment models for the life sciences sector; advances in gene therapy; drug repurposing, that is, finding new indications for drugs already on the market; and new challenges and new priorities for clinical trials.

An international line-up of speakers includes experts from Europe, Israel, Canada, the United States, and Australia. This year has a special focus on transatlantic collaboration with the Massachusetts region and two of its universities – Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

A keynote address on Digital Health in Academic Medicine will be given by Heyo Kroemer, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Göttingen and Chairman of the Managing Board of the University Medical Center Göttingen. This year the Summit is welcoming a special guest, Stephen Kennedy Smith, who heads the Kennedy family office. In a fireside chat, the investor, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Pear Therapeutics will provide insights into the Kennedy family’s interest in supporting innovations in the health sector. Elizabeth O’Day, among others, will give a talk on New Challenges for Clinical Trials. She is the CEO and founder of a Boston-based company focusing on the identification of biomarkers that show which new drugs will work on which patients. This could, for example, help researchers recruit the right participants for clinical trials.

Other plenary talks will look at the best strategy for bringing digital health innovations to market. Arthur L. Caplan, an internationally recognized ethics expert from New York, will speak about the role of ethics in experimental studies, and Michael T. Hemann from MIT will highlight the latest developments in the use of CAR T cells for cancer immunotherapy.
 
Interactive workshops will provide young entrepreneurs with strategic tips for launching a company. The Life Sciences Venture Market gives these budding entrepreneurs an opportunity to present their ideas and business concepts to international investors. “Physicians receive support from the BIH Digital Health Accelerator to help make their digital ideas for the health sector marketable,” explains Klaus Nitschke from BIH Innovations, the joint technology transfer unit of Charité and the Berlin Institute of Health. “At the Charité BIH Entrepreneurship Summit, they can learn from examples of international best practice, grow their international network, and possibly make contacts with investors who are willing to invest in their ideas.”

The complete program can be downloaded here.

The Summit will be take place on Monday, June 17, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Tuesday, June 18, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities on Markgrafenstrasse 38, 10017 Berlin. All talks will be held in English. Representatives of the media are cordially invited to attend the Summit. Please register via the BIH’s press office: presse@bihealth.de