Neuron Science Night connected science and business

The most ideas come when you leave familiar surroundings and step out of your bubble. So the Neuron Club headed just outside Prague to discuss practical experience of applying research and transferring science. Neuron Science Night connected leading Czech scientists with businesspeople, the foundation's patrons and Neuron Award laureates. How did the meeting go? And what did it give the scientists?

"The Neuron Foundation's mission is to support and connect scientific and business elites, because they can then roll out the best of what they have into society. It was they who met at the first Neuron Science Night — simply an exceptional gathering that shared its experience, visions and motivation," Monika Vondráková, director and co-founder of the Neuron Foundation, said at the start of the meeting.

A step-by-step presentation of the complicated process behind transferring science into business, and on the other side plenty of questions from scientists who are only preparing to apply their research. All of it complemented by the view of leading businesspeople who look at the whole process from a distance. That, in short, is how the informal discussion went that followed presentations of experience with science transfer. What preceded it?

Transfer through the eyes of leading cancer research experts

• Martina Benešová-Schäfer, the Czech nuclear chemist who develops radiopharmaceuticals for treating cancer in Heidelberg, shared her experience of successfully commercialising a prostate cancer drug and of what it is like to do science with a "giant" behind you. In this case the German Cancer Research Center, where she works. If someone has an interesting idea there, for instance, they try to protect it from the start. Students go through media training so that they know what and how they may share publicly without breaching confidential information. But what is fundamental: the centre in Heidelberg is neither a university nor a company; it is something in between. "One of the biggest differences is that we can decide practically everything ourselves, but that we then also bear full responsibility," Martina Benešová-Schäfer recalled.

• Miloslav Polášek now knows how to connect basic and applied research effectively and how to patent radioactive lutetium — partly thanks to his wife Jana, who gave him the idea that having research results is not quite enough, that you also have to "sell" them. Only then can research and its results interest potential investors from business. Together they put together a business pitch in scientific style, promoted the idea and eventually sowed the idea of founding a research group at IOCB Tech — it bears the name of the Miloslav Polášek Group and focuses on coordination chemistry.
• The Neuron Award laureates in medicine Jitka Palich Fučíková and Radek Špíšek talked, among other things, about how Sotio Biotech invests in innovative companies developing anti-cancer therapies.
• Michal Holčapek, Ondřej Peterka and Zdeněk Jirsa of Lipidica a.s. then shared their experience of a university spin-off in their presentation. The laureates of the Neuron Award 2023 for transferring science into business successfully patented their test method for detecting pancreatic cancer from a single drop of blood.

"What was presented was bound to be a success. For me it confirmed that focusing on top performance and excellence makes sense," added the biochemist Zdeněk Hostomský, who works at the IOCB and co-hosted the meeting with the Neuron Foundation's director Monika Vondráková.

The road to scientific success is a winding one

What participants in Neuron Science Night most appreciated was being able to meet colleagues from other fields, step outside their own environment and see other approaches, but above all concrete examples of successful projects with all their successes and failures. Because failure too is part of the journey.

"The road is not always clear; the road to success is a winding one. We also have to talk about what did not work," Miloslav Polášek recalled. Ondřej Peterka, who together with Michal Holčapek and Zdeněk Jirsa won the Neuron Award for connecting science and business mentioned above, responded in a similar spirit: "Looking for a new route after a failure is ultimately very motivating. There is always some way; you just have to find it. It was superb to be able to meet the greatest authorities, who shared their experience with us."

Science is business. And business is science

The leading expert in cancer biology Kateřina Rohlenová, a laureate of the Neuron Award for promising scientists, mentioned in the discussion that in the Czech Republic we sometimes tend to nest and take no interest in what is going on around us. "But I am convinced that it is for the world around us that we do all this. Scientists meeting non-scientists is one level; the second is scientists meeting scientists. And the third level is scientists meeting businesspeople. That is why meetings like this matter."

"Overcoming" the barrier between scientists and businesspeople was exactly the key part of Neuron Science Night. Neither can exist without the other. The Neuron Foundation patron Jaroslav Řasa summed it up aptly: "At the beginning there is an interest in solving something and helping with something: we will make antivirals, we will develop software. Science and business are the same in this — in the end both want to move something forward. That is why Neuron tries to combine science and business."

The two-day Neuron Science Night took place on 18 and 19 January 2024 in the beautiful surroundings of Villa Dom Carli near Kutná Hora — take a look at the photo gallery. Thank you all for coming and for a very inspiring meeting!