Frontier science and business that makes a difference

'My father is Portuguese, my mother is Spanish. My mother works in healthcare, my father is an engineer. I believe that I joined these two different interests in the course that I chose. 

When I met Filipa, one of the co-founders of StemCell2Max, right from the beginning we realised that we both wanted to launch our own business related to healthcare, through which we believed we could have an impact on people's lives. We had weekly meetings, while I was doing the MBA, where we tried to discuss, every Wednesday, what could be interesting ideas to pursue. The Portuguese Business Angels, here in Lisbon, presented us with this project from IMM (Instituto de Medicina Molecular), developed by the group of Henrique Veiga-Fernandes (ERC grantee) and Sílvia Arroz Madeira. And this was the moment when we saw that potential and we said: 'Okay, this is it. This is exactly what we want to pursue.'

The project is related to blood stem cells. These cells have two different purposes. On the one hand, patients who have blood cancer malignancies, like lymphomas or leukaemias, need to have access to these cells, so that they can benefit from a transplant. And on the other hand, there are researchers, worldwide, who also need to have access to these cells, so that they can perform their own studies for developing treatments for new therapies. What's the big challenge, both for these clinicians, but also for the researchers? It's to have access to these cells in high enough quantity and quality. And this is exactly what this science breakthrough brings.

One of the things that I like the most is walking, walking around cities. And Lisbon is a great city. It's much easier for both of us to have clear ideas when we are outside a closed room.'

Maria Brandão de Vasconcelo