Our co-founder Michal Zahradníček spoke with Wired Czech Republic about why excellent Czech and European science so rarely turns into new technologies and globally successful companies, and what needs to change for research results to make their way from the laboratory into practice.

According to Michal, the main obstacle is not a lack of money. Around CZK 40 billion flows into Czech research from the state budget every year, totalling CZK 364 billion between 2015 and 2024. What is missing is the right motivation and the know-how to carry out technology transfer. As long as research institutions receive funding regardless of whether they transfer their results, transfer remains extra work that few people reward. Michal argues that technology transfer should become part of institutions’ key performance indicators, and that laboratories that successfully transfer their research should automatically receive more funding for basic research too.

The numbers illustrate the gap clearly. The EU produces around 20% of the world’s scientific output, yet its share of global patenting fell from 24.5% in 2012 to 15.9% in 2022. The EU has 101 unicorns, compared to 824 in the United States and 351 in China. “I feel we’ve got stuck explaining and repeating what doesn’t work and what needs to change, instead of actually doing it,” says Michal.

This is exactly the gap LIFE bioCEEd was created to address. Unlike Primecell, a bio-engineering company focused on patents and inventions that treat the causes of disease rather than its symptoms, LIFE bioCEEd brings both capital and know-how to promising, very early-stage academic research, where funding and a lack of transfer experience are the main barriers. In recent months, we have invested in a potentially first-in-class therapeutic platform for ALS and led the seed round in BreathPredict, a UK company developing an AI-powered asthma diagnostic device. In our experience, almost no one else on the market systematically transfers research at such an early stage, not only in Central and Eastern Europe but in Western Europe as well.

Michal also makes a clear case for licensing over spin-offs. Spin-offs are operationally and legally complex, risky for academic institutions, and slow to generate returns. The University of Cambridge has created more than 200 spin-offs since 1995, but sells 100 to 150 licences every year. His advice to academic institutions is simple: license, license, license.

The interview also covers:

· Why innovation is the only source of lasting national wealth and independence

· How Czech universities perform in patenting, and why CTU in Prague is leading the way

· Why scientists who have spent decades on a molecule should not be forced to become businesspeople

· Where the next generation of biotech companies is heading, from gene therapy and proteomics to psychedelics and personalized medicine that treats causes rather than symptoms

Read the full article on Wired: https://www.wired.cz/clanky/jedine-inovace-davaji-narodu-bohatstvi-a-nezavislost-rika-investor-zahradnicek