Pistoia Alliance launches $20,000 competition for life sciences start-ups

Life sciences start-ups could win $20,000 in a competition launched by not-for-profit organisation, the Pistoia Alliance.

The organisation’s President’s Startup Challenge is now in its seventh year and offers support and funding to winners of the competition. The Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup challenge has been designed to help transform research and development, alongside healthcare innovation, through funding and long-term collaboration with start-ups.

The Challenge will comprise of two pitch finals taking place at the Alliance’s annual conferences: the Ideas Showcase in April for startups less than a year old, and a further final in October for startups between one and three years old. The Pistoia Alliance is calling for partners, organisations, universities and existing accelerators to come forward and get involved. 

“Covid-19 has placed worldwide attention firmly on R&D endeavours and the importance of collaboration to accelerate innovation,” said Dr Steve Arlington, president of the Pistoia Alliance. “Never before have life sciences and healthcare been on the front page of every newspaper every day, making it crucial that we support R&D innovation at the earliest possible stage. Our remodelling of the President’s Startup Challenge reflects the wider efforts of the Pistoia Alliance to support this mission, from our Innovation Seed Fund to digital health hackathons. After all, life sciences innovation cannot take place in isolation; it requires the whole industry to work together. Through our revised Challenge, we hope to make our members aware of this need, and encourage their organiations to actively get involved.”

This year’s launch of the President’s Startup Challenge follows the success of previous winners, including Riffyn Nexus, Medexprim, Cubuslab (now LabForward), Arctoris, Molecule.com and InSilicoTrials. Overall, these finalists have gone on to raise over $50 million in funding and now employ more than 200 people. 

Winners of the competition will receive $20,000 each, along with access to the Pistoia Alliance’s member network, judging network, and support from the new start-up ecosystem. This will comprise of boot camp courses, long term mentoring and networking with industry professionals, and access to new ideas generation partnerships such as hackathons and accelerators. The remaining finalists will each receive $5,000 towards the further advancement of their solutions.

“As world economies hope to emerge from the pandemic more resilient, 2021 has rightly been dubbed the ‘Year of the Startup’, with particular room for innovation across R&D,” said David Proudlock, Innovation Consultant at the Pistoia Alliance. “Yet, startups will need more virtual support than ever this year. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that the advancement of therapeutics and medical devices is the whole industry’s responsibility. Simply funding startups is no longer enough to ensure their success, which is why we’re calling on organisations and academia to come together and support new ideas generation long-term.”