In 2006, long-time journalists Victoria English and William Ellington decided to quit their jobs and to establish their own publication, the biomedical trade journal MedNous (pronounced Med-Nows). A year later, in September 2007, the first issue appeared alongside with the website www.mednous.com.

akampion: Why did you establish MedNous?

Victoria English: Both of us thought Europe’s very innovative life science industry needed better communication. Back then, everyone was thinking in clusters and areas, and we felt by connecting the dots we could support the industry in its efforts to increase efficiency. Second, at that time the European Commission and the EMEA were very worried about the decreasing productivity of the biopharmaceutical industry, and Europe developed the Innovative Medicines Initiative, similar to the FDA’s Critical Path policy. This, too, called for better collaboration, and we wanted to capture this shift in official politics to encourage collaboration and translation of discoveries into products. Third, after working for many years in big corporations such as Reuters, DowJones, McGraw Hill and Informa, I thought it is time to start my own company.

akampion: What kind of preparations were necessary?  » Read more...

In 2010, Tom Kronbach headed the management buy-out of biocrea from Biotie Therapies (Finland). Since then, he has expanded biocrea´s management team and been responsible for building a cutting-edge portfolio of CNS drugs. Tom has spent the past decades focusing on drug development at companies such as Warner Lambert and was a co-founder of elbion, which was acquired by Biotie Therapies in 2008.

akampion: biocrea has just had its first anniversary. Has everything turned out as expected?

Tom Kronbach: Our first year was very interesting. When we started last year, we had a number of opportunities in mind – VC financing, M&A projects, partnering – but we did not know how they would work out. The first year was full of surprises, so diversification in the early days has been key to determine which strategy works for us.

akampion: biocrea was established by a management buy-out (MBO) – which is not very common in the biopharmaceutical industry. How did you get to the decision to do an MBO from Biotie Therapies last year?

T. K.: I was convinced that we had an excellent team and a high productivity, and both were the basis for doing the MBO. Of course, it was risky but I knew it could work.  » Read more...

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