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
Anabel Sanz, Ph.D.
Head of the Technology and Business Development Office (TBDO)
Anabel has broad experience in evaluation of technologies in life sciences, intellectual asset management, licensing, business development and new ventures. Since 2010, she has held managerial positions in technology transfer at three research excellence centers in Spain, CNB-CSIC (Biotechnology), CNIO (Cancer) and since 2019, at CRG (Genomics). Previously she worked for more than a decade in a spin-off (CropDesing) of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and in the multinational company BASF. She has implemented innovation processes and successfully supported establishment of numerous public-private research partnerships and IPR transactions. A chemist by training, she holds a Master’s in Science from the U. Wales, UK, a PhD in Biology from the Autonomous University in Madrid (ES), postdoctoral experience in Spain and Belgium and an Executive Master in Science and Technology Business from IE business school.
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.
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.
Diana Domínguez, Ph.D.
Innovation Facilitator
Diana graduated in Biomedical Sciences from the Universitat de Barcelona and holds a MRes in Translational Cancer Medicine from the King’s College of London with a focus on cancer immunotherapies. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biomedicine from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. During her doctoral training at the IRB Barcelona she gained expertise in cancer metabolism while focusing on transcriptomic and epigenetic events underlying metastasis. After a post-doctoral period in the same institution Diana joined the TBDO and Grants departments as an Innovation Facilitator, where her main role is to support the CRG research groups and management Offices in the framework of the HESCALA project. Together with Grants, ISA, Communications & PR she will contribute to foster the collaboration of the research community with innovation stakeholders in new projects oriented to innovation, and increasing the opportunities for funding in the new Horizon Europe framework programme for research and innovation.
Francisco Miguel Torres, PhD
Industry Liaison Manager
Francisco has experience in business development, project management and biomedical projects evaluation. He was Innovation Program Manager at “la Caixa” Foundation, where he managed innovation funding schemes and provided support to granted projects. Previously, he was the responsible of the Knowledge Management and Quality department at IDIBELL, where he developed different duties, including scientific performance assessment, definition of innovation portfolio structure, open access policies implementation and lean management. He also was Business Developer at ReadyCell a Barcelona based biotech company. Francisco is biologist and biochemist by training, and holds a PhD in Molecular Biology, focused in Lung adenocarcinoma metastasis, performed at VHIO. He complemented his scientific training with a postdoc at IRB Barcelona. Currently, he is also Associate Professor at UIC.
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.