As society’s challenges become increasingly complex, more innovators are needed, but also a powerful innovation partner to support them in progress. The various activities within RISE constitute a unique pool of forces to increase the pace of innovation. This is exceedingly important in Life Science, particularly in the development of the next generation cell- and gene therapies.
Within RISE Research Institutes of Sweden there are several research nodes (institutes) and hundreds of test beds and demonstration environments that, gathered into one organisation, form an innovation partner with expanded opportunities to meet the business community and society’s challenges.
The utmost goal is to create increased innovation power through several different channels, the main being cross-functional research and collaboration between different areas of knowledge, a stronger national collaboration between industry, academia and research institutes, increased international collaboration with world-leading universities, institutes and companies.
Gothenburg-based research can change the future
The presence of a large research institute in Borås, which is considered part of the West-Sweden Life Science arena, brings power to the Gothenburg region. Various RISE-projects are connected to Chalmers and the University of Gothenburg, for instance. Many projects are of national and even international nature.
RISE has a group of researchers based in Gothenburg, under the biology division. Two of them are Jukka Lausmaa and Jim Lund, both with interest in the development of future treatments based on cell and gene therapy.
“The pharmaceutical industry of the future must be able to supply much more than just pills. The pharmaceutical drugs of the future will be more individualised, and to a large extent much more advanced with the help of the patient’s own cells. For instance, it is already possible to create powerful cancer treatments using the patient’s own defence cells but modified to attack only cancerous cells”, says Jim Lund.
Imagine what this means for the future. We could in a few years have access to safe and efficient cancer treatments that are so personalised and targeted to a specific function that there are few, if any, side-effects to be had. This in turn brings about a whole new world of possibilities.
A future of more collaboration
The RISE presence in the region provides increased availability of the entire RISE research and development services. Through close cooperation between institutes and the business community, mutual insight and understanding of each other’s activities increases. In the long run, this could lead to many new research and development initiatives in the Gothenburg region.
“At RISE, we are an important resource for companies in the region. We assist with knowledge and research that leads them in the right direction in their own innovation process. We have numerous collaboration projects ongoing, where business meets academia and research is branched out as a result. We believe in a future of more collaboration”, says Jukka Lausmaa.
