Cathrine Heuch, founder of the Norwegian start-up Nordic Brain Tech, received EU funding from DIGI-B-CUBE to develop a prototype that will help migraine patients.

2,4 million euros for digital health innovations

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Oslo Cancer Cluster has awarded EU funding of 2,4 million euro to companies that want to digitalise the medical sector.

What if the medical and technological sectors could join forces so that patients could receive more precise diagnosis and treatment? Imagine the products that could be created, the costs that could be saved and the lives that could be improved. This was the idea behind the EU-funded project DIGI-B-CUBE, which was coordinated by Oslo Cancer Cluster for the last three years.

“We need to create collaborations between people working in medicine and people working in tech, so they can develop innovative solutions to handle health data or analyse medical images. This can lead to faster, more precise diagnosis, and ultimately advance precision medicine in cancer,” said Ketil Widerberg, general manager of Oslo Cancer Cluster.

 

Better diagnostics with tech

Simply explained, DIGI is short for digitalisation and B-CUBE is short for bio-imaging, bio-sensing and bio-banking. All three Bs are important tools in medical research and diagnosis, especially in personalised medicine.

The goal of DIGI-B-CUBE was to raise the level of digitalisation in these B-industries. The project’s approach was to match companies in health with relevant tech companies and provide funding so innovations could be developed.

“We see the medical sector, one of the most innovative sectors, is lingering behind in digitalisation.”

“We see the medical sector, one of the most innovative sectors, is lingering behind in digitalisation. When applying artificial intelligence to analysis of x-ray images, you can do much better diagnostics, statistical evaluations, and forecasts about who is disposed to get, for example, breast cancer. This is not just about making the processes more effective, but about the impact, which is better health, longer lives and saving lives,” said Tamara Högler, DIGI-B-CUBE coordinator on behalf of Oslo Cancer Cluster.

 

Made idea into prototype

In total, DIGI-B-CUBE provided 2,4 million euros in funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme to 32 projects from 75 companies across Europe.

Cathrine Ro Heuch, CEO of Nordic Brain Tech, was one of the recipients. Heuch has suffered from headaches her entire life but received limited help from the healthcare system. When she met a group of neuroscientists with a novel solution while working for NTNU technology transfer, she decided to do something about it.

“The doctors from St Olav’s Hospital had invented a digital treatment for migraines in children. Using biofeedback, you can train the nervous system to be more relaxed. The principal of biofeedback is very old and recommended in the national guidelines for migraine treatments, but it is not available in the public healthcare system in Norway,” said Heuch.

Heuch founded the company Nordic Brain Tech with the goal to transform the solution into a product that is cost-effective and easy-to-use for patients at home. However, it is not easy to find private capital, because investors see a high risk in early-stage projects. Heuch needed public funding to make her idea into a prototype.

Högler also knows how difficult it is for early-stage companies to access public funding on an international level.

“Funding applications for European projects is not something you complete in one or two hours. It is a long process. The chance of receiving funding is low and the administrative process is complicated. In comparison, the application for DIGI-B-CUBE was quite lean and the project duration was short,” Högler explained.

Nordic Brain Tech applied for DIGI-B-CUBE funding, together with their partner i3tex in Sweden and their partner Thorgate in Estonia, and they were granted 150 000 euros.

“It was important to have partners in other countries because these skill sets are not widely available in Norway.”

“It was important to have partners in other countries because these skill sets are not widely available in Norway. There are many great medtech development companies in Sweden, so we found a partner there that could create the device. Estonia has many great software developers, so it was natural to ask someone there to help us create the app,” Heuch explained.

Using funding from DIGI-B-CUBE, they created a prototype that monitors body temperature, heart rate, and muscle tension, while connected to an app on your phone.

“The point of the treatment is to train the body to have better blood flow, increase the body temperature and relax the muscles in the neck. The idea is to follow a 12-week programme, using the product 10 minutes every day, to increase the patient’s awareness of how these body functions are connected to migraines,” Heuch explained.

Nordic Brain Tech are now on the way to launch a clinical study in Trondheim. If successful, this product may help the one in seven Norwegians who suffer from migraines today.

6 people in front of a green wall looking into the camera smiling

The DIGI-B-CUBE consortium met at Oslo Cancer Cluster in November 2021. From the left: Nikolaos Matskanis (Infopole), Panagiotis Markovits (Motivian), Gerry Renders (EISMEA), Miltiadis Anastasiadis (Motivan), Gawel Walczak (Secpho), Astrid Green (OCC), Milena Stoyanova (EISMEA), Ketil Widerberg (OCC) and Bente Prestegård (OCC).

Clusters connected companies

DIGI-B-CUBE was implemented by a consortium of eight partners in different European countries and co-ordinated by Oslo Cancer Cluster. The point of involving clusters was to ease the identification of the needs of the companies in each region and to simplify matchmaking between them.

“Small companies need incentives in order to work together across countries and sectors.”

“Small companies need incentives in order to work together across countries and sectors. It is great the European Union gives out these funds and that Oslo Cancer Cluster can take a role in connecting companies across Europe,” said Widerberg.

Carina Schachinger, Project Manager at Business Upper Austria, stresses that the success of the project went beyond the funding.

“This was a great success because we were able to connect these companies with research and business partners across borders. Companies could extend their network on an international level, which is normally quite difficult,” said Schachinger.

Although the corona pandemic made it challenging for the consortium and companies to meet, the interest in medical diagnostics suddenly increased. The fact that DIGI-B-CUBE went virtual enabled more companies from different countries to participate in the digital sessions. Ultimately, 980 SMEs applied for in total 426 innovation projects.

“What makes DIGI-B-CUBE great is that if you support these companies in their innovation, then it has an immediate benefit in the companies, but it is also about medical diagnostics and health in general. It has this big benefit for society. When we look at the 32 projects that received funding, it is great to have this precise approach to medicine and this can improve the lives for you and me,” said Schachinger.

 

Stay connected to our website and social media channels to learn more about our initiatives and funding calls on a European level.

From the left: Svein Stølen, Ivar P. Gladhaug, Solveig Kristensen, and Hilde Nebb opening the Life Science Growth House at the University of Oslo on 17 February 2022. Photo: UiO, Life Science Growth House/Fartein Rudjord.

Life Science Growth House is open

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Four people on a stage cutting a ribbonUiO, Life Science Growth House/Fartein Rudjord.

Tailored counseling, funding assistance, and innovation hangouts are part of the innovation package offered by the new Life Science Growth House at the University of Oslo.

“The Life Science Growth House is about utilizing the research. We are good at research, but we can become even better at transferring that knowledge to innovation and making use of it in society,” said Svein Stølen, Rector of the University of Oslo (UiO), when the Life Science Growth House was officially opened 17 Febryary 2022, according to an article in Titan.uio.no.

The new Growth House is going to have an open door with low-threshold services for researchers and students. They will have tailored counseling, including e.g. an assessment of the maturity and relevance of an idea, possible seed funding or external funding, possible collaborations with others in the UiOs innovation ecosystem, including mentoring and business partnerships, and ultimately possible meeting places, seminars, and competence courses.

Just another collaboration platform?

Ketil Widerberg, General Manager of Oslo Cancer Cluster, welcomed the Life Science Growth House into the innovation ecosystem around UiO with these words from the stage at the opening event:

“Do we really need more initiatives for collaboration between academia and industry? The simple answer is yes.”

He stressed the importance of start-up companies as a natural sequel to good academic ideas.

“Too often ideas are hidden and forgotten in academia. Companies are only invited to “whitewash” and secure money from the Norwegian Research Council for research that is already planned in detail. Good ideas are out-licensed early on to secure next year’s budget instead of invested in Norwegian start-ups. Academics have to fight the system daily to be able to contribute to development,” he continued in his speech.

Ketil Widerberg speaking at the opening. Photo: UiO/Fartein Rudjord

Ketil Widerberg speaking at the opening. Photo: UiO/Fartein Rudjord

 

Innovation hangouts

The Life Science Growth House will arrange innovation hangouts four times per year. This is an informal meeting place where students and researchers from the university may interact with actors from the public sector, hospitals, companies, mentors, business clusters, and incubators in their innovation ecosystem – like Oslo Cancer Cluster and our incubator! The hangouts include inspirational talks, matchmaking, food and beverage, and mingling.

The first innovation hangout is with Oslo Cancer Cluster. It will take place in the afternoon of 21 April. Save the date! 

Read more about the first innovation hangout.

Read more

Ketil Widerberg, General Manager at Oslo Cancer Cluster, opened the meeting on intelligent and personalized algorithms to prevent cancer 20 September 2018.

American tech and Norwegian health data

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Combining country scale population data with world class computer systems and algorithms will push the boundaries of precision medicine.

This is a story about the unique American-Norwegian collaboration that combines the best health data with the most powerful computers in a pioneer project run by Cancer Registry of Norway and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Data to screen cancer 
The ongoing project was initiated after a talk on tech between the General Manager of Oslo Cancer Cluster and a Senior Scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Some months later, in San Francisco, a meeting room was filled with some of the world’s best minds on cancer and technology. The Norwegians knew cancer and the Americans knew computing. The outcome was unknown. 

They identified a concrete challenge. Can we see patterns in data to screen cancer more precisely?

The quest resulted in a successful cooperation between Lawrence Livermore and the Cancer Registry in January 2016 where a team from the Cancer Registry started the first project on cervical cancer. If successful, they would potentially identify and screen high risk patients earlier and leave the low risk patients unburdened. 

Now there are two ongoing projects, one on cervical cancer and one on multitask learning for cancer. The goal is to make predictions more accurate and improve precision medicine. 

– If successful we can potentially identify and screen high risk earlier and leave the low risk unburdened. The individual and social impact of such a strategy is significant. This may be the reason why Joe Biden mentioned details from this project at a UN Assembly last year, Widerberg said.

Former Vice President Joe Biden led the American cancer initiative known as the Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel. Two years ago, when the collaborative project between Norway and the USA had just started, the Blue Ribbon Panel released a report describing ten transformative research recommendations for achieving the Cancer Moonshot’s ambitious goal of making a decade’s worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in just 5 years.

One of the ten recommendations was to expand use of proven cancer prevention and early detection strategies.

The major research questions
– One of the major research questions right now is How do we design the optimal screening programs? Another is how to actually take advantage of the registry data that we have, said Giske Ursin, Director of the Cancer Registry of Norway.

In Norway, and similarly in the other Nordic countries, we have registries on various diseases, pregnancy/births, vaccinations, work history/unemployment, income and much more. We have data sets dating from the 1950s. That is unique in the world. 

– If you look at enough data, you can find interesting links that can be explored in the clinical world or elsewhere. For instance; how do other diseases affect cancer diseases? We need international expertise to cover areas we are not experts on ourselves, she said, showing a picture of one of the super computers at Lawrence Livermore.

Cancer and national security
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a national security laboratory and part of the U.S Department of Energy. The laboratory has over 5000 employees, of which at least half are engineers and researchers.

– We have the mandate from the government to push the forefront on subjects like bio security. Precision medicine is alined with the bio security mission, but it is even more relevant to the super computing research mandate. What are the next types of problems that will move this forward? Biomedical data complexity. That is why we are in this, Ana Paula de Oliveira Sales from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said in her presentation. 

Some ingredients of the project on cervical cancer is to improve cancer outcome prediction by combining disparate cancer types. The preliminary results are encouraging.

 

Break down barriers
John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of the Research Council of Norway, gave a talk on how collaborations between the Nordic countries and other countries are important for population based clinical research and health research.

– Personalized medicine is full of promise and we want to contribute to this progress, but we cannot do this only with our data. We have to collaborate with other countries and with different fields of research, he said.

One important country in that respect is of course the USA.

Kenneth J. Braithwaite, U.S Ambassador to Norway, talked about the opportunities with the Norwegian databases in a meeting in the Oslo Cancer Cluster innovation park 20 September 2018.

— I have learned the past few years that data is king, and we need to wrap our arms around this. I think there is a responsibility from the governments to begin to break down the barriers and truly find a cure to cancer. That’s what we are up against, said U.S. Ambassador to Norway Kenneth J. Braithwaite, who is Rear Admiral of United States Navy (Retired).

— As we say in the Navy, full speed ahead!

Cancer Innovation Pitched to Investors

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A full house presented itself when Inven2 pitched 8 of their most promising cancer research projects at Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator June 12th.

In total approximately 60 people gathered inside Oslo Cancer Cluster Innovation Park, and among the participants several experienced investors from other cancer projects.

— I’m positively surprised that so many potential and experienced investors found their way here today, commented Ole Kristian Hjelstuen, CEO at Inven2.

The event was the second in line of Inven2’s new pitching strategy, were they open up their projects at an early stage for potential investors and entrepreneurs with the will to transform the research into working companies.

— This shows that pitching is a good way to spread the word on the potential of our portfolio. The event today strengthens my belief that financing for our projects will be easier in the future, said Hjelstuen.

Eight Potential Treatments and Companies
Norway is among the very best when it comes to cancer research. Norwegian research has created top notch companies like Algeta, Nordic Nanovector, Ultimovacs and Zelluna Immunotherapy. Tuesdays  pitch proves that many more are on the horizon.

The eight-project presented at OCC Incubator are all exciting innovations that need financial backing and entrepreneurship to commercialize. The common denominator is a focus on modern treatments like immunology or precision medicine that are emerging as a result of what has been labelled “a breakthrough in cancer treatment” in later years.

Presentations of all eight projects available here.

The projects presented:

  • Tankyrase inhibition in cancer therapy
  • A new drug against Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML)
  • Autologous anti-CD20 TCR-engineered T-cell therapy for recurrent Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
  • Lymphocyte Booster – Lymphocyte boosting growth medium for Adoptive Cell Therapy
  • CD37 CAR for cancer immunotherapy
  • IL-15 Immunotherapy – Fusion protein for immunotherapy of solid tumors
  • Backscatter: A communication technology enabling colon-cancer screening