Head of BioMed X wins Business Worldwide Magazine’s CEO Award
The Founder and Managing Director of German biotechnology company BioMed X has been named “Biotechnology CEO Of The Year- Europe” in the Business Worldwide Magazine (BWM) 2020 CEO Awards.
The Awards seek to identify and honour the most respected C-level executives across the globe, from a comprehensive range of sectors. Unlike many other awards that focus on a company’s success, the spotlight is instead on the success of individuals who make the corporations tick– namely senior executives such as CEOs, Managing Directors, Directors and senior-level management. The intention is to give a worthy individual the recognition he/she deserves as well as to use their example to inspire others to achieve similar success.
Dr. Christian Tidona established the company in 2013 to tackle the inefficient translation of biomedical research results into new therapies.
The BioMed X Institute has been pioneering new approaches, especially in biomedical pre-clinical research, delivering results that are tangible, reproducible, and can be translated to patient care. The new centre in Heidelberg combines global crowdsourcing with local incubation, heralding a completely new way to enable innovation to these critical pre-clinical research stages.
By accessing crowdsourcing, Dr. Tidona has been able to tap into some of the best resources and research minds in the field, at the same time as giving early career scientists the opportunity to work on complex projects and lay the groundwork for a new generation of therapies. BioMed X usually receives up to 500 project proposals from early-career scientists from up to 80 countries, of whom the 15 most promising talents are then selected by an evaluation committee and invited to a five-day boot camp in Heidelberg.
“Traditionally, big pharma is facing the challenge to literally find the needle in the haystack!”
The company has been making waves in the industry, with big names including Merck, Boehringer Ingelheim, AbbVie, Roche and Johnson & Johnson following its innovation model.
Fourteen research groups have been started, approximately 50 Bachelor, Master and PhD theses have successfully been completed and more than 100 research talents from over 30 countries relocated to the centre.
Dr. Tidona explained how the model has helped big pharma solve complex issues and look for innovative approaches that has never been available before, “Traditionally, big pharma is facing the challenge to literally find the needle in the haystack! With BioMed X’s global crowdsourcing platform, we are now able to identify and attract researchers at the world’s best universities and research institutions who are interested in making a real impact in research for the benefit of patients. We have successfully completed the first steps on the way to become a major institute in Heidelberg, which is why we are quite confident that our unique model can also scale globally,” he said.