The Technology and Business Development Office (TBDO) is made of professionals with strong, and complementary scientific and business backgrounds. Determination, integrity and passion for what we do are the main drivers of our work. We are currently a team of four, supported by an administrative assistant:
About us
The mission of the Technology and Business Development Office (TBDO) at CRG is to facilitate the exploitation of the institution’s research results for the public good, and to help the economic growth of the life sciences sector in our region. Our will is that scientific results generated at CRG will develop into novel therapeutic, diagnostic and other type of products that will contribute to the wellness of our society. Read More / Less
We are responsible for materializing CRG’s-based efforts at capturing the value emanating from CRG’s research activities by:
- Identifying and assessing the market potential of innovations, discoveries and inventions made at CRG
- Securing the necessary property rights
- Managing CRG´s proof of concept fund and related initiatives
- Acting as a liaison between CRG’s innovations and researchers, and industry
- Marketing and licensing CRG’s know-how and technologies through the negotiation and execution of licensing agreements, and the creation of spin-off companies
- Creating additional value through other intellectual property-related transactions, including but not limited to consultancy, sponsored research and services
- Stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship within the CRG community through different types of activities
Pablo Cironi, Ph.D.
Head of Technology and Business Development
Pablo graduated in Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, and holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona. From 2005 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard University. In 2009, he joined the Botín Foundation in Madrid as Senior Innovation & Technology Transfer Manager, responsible for identifying new business opportunities, managing the IP portfolio and defining business strategies to bring academic and public-based research ideas to market. In 2013 he joined the Center for Genome Regulation (Barcelona) to Head the Technology and Business Development Office activities where his main role consists of channeling CRG´s discoveries to market. With over 14 years research and development experience in Drug Discovery, Molecular Biology, Synthetic Biology and Biologics, and 7 years managing technology transfer and commercialization processes. Dr. Cironi has acquired a unique and strong acumen in strategy and innovation, and serves on several boards of renown health research institution, and is often an invited speaker of reference in the field.
Silvia Tórtola, Ph.D.
Senior Business Development Manager
Silvia graduated in Biology from the University of Barcelona, and holds a Master in Immunology and a Ph.D. in Biology from the same institution. From 1998 to early 2002, she was research fellow at the Fondation pour Recherches Médicales (University of Geneva, Switzerland), working on fundamental questions of gene regulation and cancer. In 2002, she moved to Germany to work as a scientist at the biotech start-up company Europroteome AG (of which she was also founder member), focused on the development of diagnostic and prognostic tools as well as patient-specific therapies for human epithelial cancers. Late in 2005, she moved back to Barcelona to initiate the technology transfer activities at CRG, where she is also a member of the Ethical Committee of Clinical Research.
Salvatore Cappadona, PhD.
Business Development Manager
Salvo graduated in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and in Bioinformatics from Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden). His postgraduate credentials include a Ph.D. in Bioengineering, with a main focus on Signal and Image Processing in Mass Spectrometry-based Proteomics, from Politecnico di Milano; postdoctoral research experience, with a main focus on Computational Proteomics and Bioinformatics, in top-ranking Proteomics groups at the JamesLab (Lund University, Sweden), the HeckLab (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and at the CRG Proteomics Facility (Barcelona, Spain); and an International Diploma in Science Management from IE Business School (Madrid, Spain), with a main focus on Entrepreneurship in the Biotech field. In 2014 he joined the TBDO as Associate Business Development Manager, where his main role consists of scouting for early technologies originating at CRG and leading them as much as possible towards novel products and services that benefit society.
Peter Stienen, PhD.
Translational Research Manager
Peter graduated in Biology from Radboud University Nijmegen, and obtained his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) with a focus on pharmacology and electrophysiology. After a postdoctoral period in the same institution, he switched from academia to pharmaceutical industry in 2008. In the last 7 years, he has worked in different companies, ranging from small spin-off biotech to big pharma companies such as Ferrer Internacional (Spain) and AstraZeneca (Sweden). During these years, he worked in Research & Development towards the discovery and (pre)clinical development of potential new medicines, applying and gaining expertise in combining different technical platforms including pharmacology, electrophysiology, pharmacokinetics and imaging. In 2015 he joined the TBDO as Translational Research Manager, where his main role consists of designing and managing appropriate experimental studies and projects to bridge the gap(s) between research and commercialization.
Ester Montava
Executive Assistant
Ester holds a BSc in History of Art from the University of Barcelona. Before joining the CRG, initially as Assistant to the CEO, she worked more than 21 years in a multinational private company. She has attended throughout her career complementary training in secretarial tasks, sales techniques and management, and she holds a postgraduate degree in protocol and events organization from the University of Barcelona.
We have strong links to many other technology transfer offices and networks worldwide, being proud members of a number of professional associations, namely:
- ASTP-Proton, the pan-European association for professionals involved in knowledge transfer between universities and public research institutions and industry
- AUTM, the US-based Association of University Technology Managers
- EU-Life, an alliance of top research centres in life sciences to support and strengthen European research excellence, structured around different working groups, including one devoted to Technology Transfer
- RedOTRI, the Spanish network of technology transfer offices from universities and public research institutions
The TBDO also benefits from the expert advice of a Business Board that is made up of representatives from local and international biotech and pharma companies, venture capital, a business school and the economics press. The Board meets once a year to guide and advice the institution in general and the TBDO in particular, about different initiatives to help bridge the gap between science and society, and science and industry.
Through the years we have also engaged ourselves in countless partnerships and collaborations with some of the main stakeholders in the biomedical field.