A snapshot into the life of a Start-Up at CPHI Frankfurt

This interview captures a snapshot into what it is like for a Start-Up company attending CPHI Frankfurt for the first time, under the Start-Up Programme the event has been running for the last couple of years, and what this means to the people behind these innovative early-stage companies. 

What brings you to Frankfurt? Is this your first time at CPHI?

I've been travelling to conferences for the last two years, since we started Bespark Bio, and I've heard a lot of stories about CPHI – the beast in the conference scene – and I wanted to be here for my first time, making my own experiences. 

What problem is your startup addressing and what is it going to solve? 

We support therapy developers in the Biologics field, but also viral vectors, ATPs, process development, and CMCs. We have our own labs, where we develop manufacturing processes that are fit for purpose and scalable then to move on to GMP production. 

What is the inspiration behind the start of Bespark Bio? 

We saw a lot of biotech companies that develop biotherapeutics that don't have the CMC capabilities and process development capabilities. We've built a lot of experiences and capacities over the last few years, and that's how we came to the idea of founding Bespark Bio. 

What stage are you currently at with the business? 

We are still a Start-Up, we are made up of nine people at the moment. We are bootstrapping, so early days, I would say... 

What's the biggest challenge you're facing at this moment in time? 

At the moment, it is the economic situation, the funding situation for our potential clients is difficult, so they don't get the funding through VCs or investors, which then, of course, makes it difficult for us as a service provider to attract new business.

How will your business make a difference to patients and to the clients? 

What we aim to do is really to reduce the time in the lab, so we use data modelling and machine learning approaches to identify and only carry out experiments in the lab that are clinically important and less likely to fail. This means that we are reducing timelines, costs, and accelerating projects, and at the same time, de-risking projects and preventing them from failure at that early clinical development stage. 

Any thoughts, or observations on your time at CPHI Frankfurt so far? 

It's good, I think the vibe is good. It's a huge show, so a lot of running around yesterday, and a lot more running around today. 

And if we meet again this time next year, what are you going to tell me? 

I hope that we will be able to meet next year – I think the next year is going to be tough, based on the economic situation, but I'm remaining positive. We will have more projects, we will expand our portfolio – potentially into the biosimilars market as well – so we will have more clients. We might even have a bigger booth then, if everything goes well!