Author: Guy Sich

Stephanie Lacour to Direct EPFL’s Center for Neuroprosthetics

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Professor Stephanie Lacour, the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology, is today – the 1st of February 2018  – to succeed Professor Olaf Blanke as Director of EPFL’s Center for Neuroprosthetics. She will take over from Professor Olaf Blanke, who has led the Center since 2012 when it was founded.

Professor Blanke, the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics, has been instrumental in establishing the Center as a major presence in its research field and in forging its first-rate reputation for clinical translation in neuroscience and neuroengineering. He was also pivotal to the successful move of the Center and its work to Campus Biotech, where he continued to build key alliances in the  development of a clinical research network throughout the Lemanic region and beyond.

Stéphanie Lacour holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology. She is Professor at the School of Engineering and leads the Laboratory of Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces. She is a founding member of the Center for Neuroprosthetics and an advocate for its interdisciplinary research. Professor Lacour brings cutting edge expertise in soft materials science and engineering to the CNP as well as innovative perspectives to help develop and deploy neuroprosthetic medicine. Her nomination at the CNP Directorship received unanimous support of the CNP faculties and EPFL Presidency.

Bertarelli Foundation President’s Innovation Challenge Fund at Harvard Business School

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The Bertarelli Foundation is pleased to announce that through its gift to Harvard University, the Bertarelli Foundation President’s Innovation Challenge Fund has been established at Harvard Business School.

Ernesto Bertarelli commented:

“We are delighted to support the President’s Innovation Challenge Fund, building once again on our existing relationship with Harvard.  Our aim is to help Harvard find and support the next generation of entrepreneurs with bold ideas and the commitment to see those become reality. With the support of the remarkable community of teachers and innovators at the School, I am confident this Fund will continue to help fuse the scientific vision and the passion for business that Harvard inspires amongst its students.”

Established in 2012, the President’s Innovation Challenge was established to encourage members of the Harvard community to engage with issues facing the world and to spark the creative development of solutions that will address vexing social, medical, and scientific problems. In 2017, more than 200 student teams from across Harvard University competed in the Challenge.

In 2013, the Bertarelli Foundation funded the Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge at the Harvard i-lab. This new commitment to the President’s Innovation Challenge Fund will extend the Bertarelli Foundation’s generosity to a broader range of early stage ventures and enable creative ideas to flourish at Harvard and beyond. In recognition of this new gift, the winners of the President’s Innovation Challenge will be awarded Bertarelli Foundation Prizes each year for the next five years.

Harvard President Drew Faust said of the gift:

“Whether it’s the development of safe and affordable surgical kits that are easily transportable to places in need of medical resources, a venture working to accelerate advances in artificial intelligence, or the scores of other projects that have been part of the President’s Innovation Challenge, the program has helped unleash the entrepreneurial and creative spirit of the Harvard community.  Making progress toward solutions to global problems requires new thinking that transcends boundaries and disciplines, and we are very grateful to the Bertarelli Foundation for the vision and generosity they have shown in their support of this community of innovators dedicated to that task.”

Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria added:

“We see countless examples of the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship in finding solutions to society’s most intractable challenges.  The Bertarelli Foundation’s generous gift will fuel the entrepreneurial spirit that exists across the University by ensuring that students have the resources to bring their game-changing ideas to fruition.”

 

 

Babson College Names William B. Gartner as Bertarelli Foundation Distinguished Professor of Family Entrepreneurship

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Professorship endowed by the Bertarelli family’s Foundation will expand the College’s deep-rooted commitment to family entrepreneurs

Babson College, ranked No. 1 for entrepreneurship, has announced the appointment of William B. Gartner as its first Bertarelli Foundation Distinguished Professor of Family Entrepreneurship— endowed by the Bertarelli Foundation through a substantial gift to the college.

Building on Babson College’s long history of educating family entrepreneurs and advancing the study of family entrepreneurship, Professor Gartner will lead a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching and studying family entrepreneurship with an emphasis on expanding the entrepreneurial mindset and skillset across generations to ensure family entrepreneurs are equipped to create economic and social value in any context.

Gartner is universally recognized as a thought leader and leading scholar in the area of entrepreneurship, published across a variety of publications including Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Academy of Management Review, Small Business Economics, Journal of Business Venturing, and many more. He will be a tenured full professor in Babson’s Entrepreneurship Division.

“We are pleased to welcome Professor Gartner as Babson’s first Bertarelli Foundation Distinguished Professor of Family Entrepreneurship,” said Babson College President Kerry Healey. “For nearly a century, Babson has been at the forefront of educating entrepreneurial families and providing research and programming to help family enterprises achieve continued growth and innovation. Thanks to the generosity of the Bertarelli Foundation, Professor Gartner’s globally-recognized thought leadership in entrepreneurship, and Babson’s ongoing investments in this field, we will continue to make great strides in supporting entrepreneurial business families.”

Family businesses were the core of Babson’s founding mission in 1919 and, today, 40 percent of the school’s undergraduate students and 70 percent of full-time MBA students hail from family enterprises. In 2005, Babson was the first to launch a global research study focused on entrepreneurship in families. Through the Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP) Project, Babson has convened and collaborated with 35 academic affiliates and 175 scholars to publish 11 books and 120 cases focused on family entrepreneurship across generations.

“I am thrilled to be at the No. 1 institution for entrepreneurship in the world, around colleagues who are leaders and pioneers in entrepreneurial research and teaching, and working with students who have a great reputation as creative organizers,” said Gartner. “Family business is an exciting area of entrepreneurship. As Babson’s mission and vision is global, and the college was founded on the principles of family business, I am excited to explore the various ways that families serve as the foundation for entrepreneurial activity all around the world.”

Ernesto Bertarelli said: “In establishing this Chair, our aim is to enable new avenues of research and thought in an area of scholarship that is central to successful entrepreneurship and to how future family business leaders adapt to an ever-changing world. We are delighted that, in Professor Gartner, Babson College has a world class academic who, as the first Bertarelli Foundation Distinguished Professor, will challenge orthodox approaches and build a team to help lead Babson forward in this vital field.”

William B. Gartner

In addition to serving as the Bertarelli Foundation Distinguished Professor of Family Entrepreneurship at Babson College, Gartner is also a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Linnaeus University in Vaxjo, Sweden. He has served in various academic positions at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, the University of Southern California, Clemson University, San Francisco State University, ESSEC in Paris, and, the Copenhagen Business School. He is the 2005 winner of the Swedish Entrepreneurship Foundation International Award for outstanding contributions to entrepreneurship and small business research. His book: Entrepreneurship as Organizing was recently published in a paperback edition by Edward Elgar. His scholarship has focused on a variety of topics in the entrepreneurship field: entrepreneurial behavior, the social construction of the future, value creation and appropriation, possibility and failure, “translating entrepreneurship” across cultures and countries, the poetics of exchange, and, the demographics of family entrepreneurship. Gartner received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1982.

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds®. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

2017 Stoke Literary Festival

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The fourth Stoke-on-Trent Literary Festival, co-sponsored by the Bertarelli Foundation, took place from 8-10 June 2017 at the Emma Bridgewater factory in the city and was, as with the previous editions, an enormous success. Over the course of the three days, more than 2,500 people took part in discussions from renowned authors and literary figures, with subjects ranging from talks about great lives, history, heritage, to the environment, literary heroes, politicise, entertainment and family fun.

Opening the Festival Emma Bridgewater and Matthew Rice presented three young people with specially designed trophies for their successful winning entries in the Stoke High schools Creative Writing Competition, before the launch event and opening headliner, Sir Tim Smit, visionary creator of the Eden Project.

Sir Tim was followed by Festival trustee and Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum Tristram Hunt, who shared behind the scenes secrets from the museum’s outstanding collections, after whom Loyd Grossman (president of the Arts Society and the Royal Parks) was fascinating on the value of heritage in a post-truth world. Guests were then treated to a brilliant, funny and musical evening from comedian Alexander Armstrong who rounded off the day one with a tremendous blues rendition on piano.

The Festival Friday was a day of illuminating specialist talks with world experts in their field. Former UK Government speech writer and journalist Julian Glover held a special event with pupils and students from across Stoke-on-Trent at the VIth Form College about following careers in journalism and politics, while back at the venue he discussed his biography of Britain’s greatest engineer Thomas Telford. Later on in the day, former Government Chancellor Ed Balls was grilled about topics including political and family life by former Fleet street journalist Anne Robinson, as well as his high-profile dancing.

The final day of the Festival was a Family day, which started with with a packed magazine making session for children, followed by a theatrical storytellings of popular stories and a chance for local children to meet author Susan Moore. In the afternoon, BBC Radio 4’s Charlotte Green was a gfreat hit, with her tales of broadcasting life, while friends of the Factory Sue Perkins and Anna Richardson spent much of the afternoon chatting with delighted visitors in the factory café before their sell out event, which was the hit of the Festival. Britain’s busiest political editor Michael Crick then provided forensic analysis of the recent UK election result and political situation.

The 2017 Literary Festival was a huge success and the Bertarelli Foundation would like to thank those very many people who worked so hard to make it so. It is a fitting annual event for Stoke-on-Trent, particularly as the city bid to become the UK City of Culture 2021.

 

Bertarelli Foundation partners with EPFL for Gene Therapy Research

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The Bertarelli Foundation has given EPFL an additional CHF 10 million donation to further accelerate research into the treatment of neurological disorders. Five million francs will be used to create a gene therapy platform at Campus Biotech, which is EPFL’s base in Geneva. The other five million will be placed in a “catalyst fund” that will promote further interactions between projects run jointly by the various research teams based at Campus Biotech.

Gene therapy research in the Lake Geneva region is about to get a shot in the arm thanks to a large donation from the Bertarelli Foundation. When a disorder is caused by a defective gene, doctors can attempt to either lessen the symptoms or treat the underlying problem. Gene therapy works by replacing parts of the DNA or directly correcting the mutations in the gene that affect how other genes function. One of the objectives of the new Bertarelli Foundation Gene Therapy Platform will be to develop viral vectors for delivering therapeutic genes in cases of neurological disorders.

A collaborative approach

The platform will be set up at Campus Biotech, where biomedical research is already being carried out by numerous research institutions: EPFL’s School of Life Sciences, the Center for Neuroprosthetics, the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering, the Human Brain Project, the University of Geneva and Geneva University Hospitals. The platform will also be able to count on the support of the new Swiss genome center and its extensive DNA sequencing capabilities.

The catalyst fund (Catalyst Fund @ Campus Biotech) will support projects conducted jointly by Campus Biotech research entities. It will be run by a scientific committee led by Patrick Aebischer, neuroscience researcher and former EPFL president.

A renewed commitment

The Bertarelli Foundation’s commitment to EPFL’s research is nothing new. Three chairs in the Center for Neuroprosthetics, held by Olaf Blanke, Stéphanie Lacour and Silvestro Micera, have already received CHF 20 million francs from the Foundation. Recruitment for the fourth chair, in the field of gene therapy, has now started.. The person who will eventually fill this post will have academic responsibility for the platform.

The Foundation also supports the Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering, a joint initiative run by EPFL and Harvard Medical School that began in 2011. “Our long-term commitment reflects our confidence in EPFL but also – and most importantly – our desire to support and drive forward the fields of research that will revolutionise tomorrow’s medicine,” said Ernesto Bertarelli.

Martin Vetterli, president of EPFL, said: “We are especially grateful to the Bertarelli Foundation for its advocacy and for its unwavering support, which allows EPFL and our partners to develop innovative technologies and treatments that benefit all of society.”

2017 Bertarelli Neuroscience Symposium

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Friday 7th of April saw the sixth annual Symposium of the Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuronengineering take place at Campus Biotech in Geneva. Bringing together the five Bertarelli teams from EPFL and Harvard Medical School, the Symposium provides an opportunity for progress to be shared, for ideas to be discussed and for plans to be made for further collaboration. Encouraging achievements, including findings yet to be published, were presented for each of the projects, which are addressing hearing loss, macula degeneration and motion-corrected fMRI for children with autism.

As well as the talks from the five Bertarelli teams, the audience heard from five former inspirational Bertarelli Fellows – students from EPFL who had, as part of the Education component of the Program, had spent a year in Boston conducting Master’s research with an HMS-affiliated laboratory – about their experiences and work. There were also four highly engaging keynote speakers who addressed topics in and around the theme of this year’s Symposium: Perception, Learning and Memory (Neuroengineering Persepectives). Harvard’s Margaret Livingstone spoke about modules in the brain and how they develop for our vision perception, while New York University’s Cristina Alberini presented her work on molecular mechanisms of long-term memory storage, in particular the role of the IGF-2 (Insulin-life Growth Factor) protein, previously unknown as having a role in neurobiology. They were followed by EPFL’s Johannes Gräff, who shared his lab’s work in the emerging field of neuroepigenetics and its potential implications for long-term memory storage, particularly for those with Alzheimer’s Disease and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Finally, UPenn’s Michael Kahana gave fascinating insight into his work using mathematical modelling and computational techniques to study memory.

The Symposium drew to a close with words from EPFL’s President, Martin Vetterli, who spoke about how it was fitting that the Symposium was being held at Campus Biotech, a “fertile ground for interactions” and a “toy store for scientists.” He was followed by an impassioned speech from Sir Jackie Stewart, who urged those present to continue their drive to increase knowledge, to further progress in neuroscience, and to ensure that the next generation of scientists are given the teaching and the tools to solve the brain’s mysteries and illnesses, particularly Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia, an issue about which he actively campaigns. Lastly, Kirsty Bertarelli gave thanks on behalf of the Bertarelli Foundation to all who participated in the Symposium and to all who had combined to make it such a success.

Speaking afterwards, Ernesto Bertarelli said:

“This Symposium, at which our teams of scientists join together to share their work, is a demonstration of the mission of the Bertarelli Program as a whole: To foster collaboration, across continents and across disciplines. As with every Symposium we hold, to hear in person the extraordinary progress being made across our joint projects is to be hugely encouraged and I – and everyone in the room at Campus Biotech – left with great hope for what is being achieved now and what will be achieved in the future.”

Improved gene therapy restores hearing and balance in mice

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Last week, David Corey, the Bertarelli Professor of Translational Medical Science at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues announced that they had identified a new viral vector for the delivery of genes to hair cells in the inner ear. Now, scientists in the US have published two papers that show that in preclinical tests improved gene therapy has restored hearing, to a much higher degree than before, and balance in genetically deaf mice.

The work, which was part-funded by the Bertarelli Foundation, follows on from the 2015 study that demonstrated the restoration of rudimentary hearing. The two new papers, which used a new vector to transfer the gene therapy, now report much improved hearing, down to 25 decibels, “the equivalent of a whisper.”

The first study, the senior investigators on which were Harvard’s Jeffrey Holt, Konstantina Stankovic and Luk Vandenberghe, showed that a new synthetic vector, Anc80, “safely transfers genes to the hard-to-reach outer hair cells”. Previously, vectors had only been able to penetrate the cochlea’s inner hair cells.

“We have shown that Anc80 works remarkably well in terms of infecting cells of interest in the inner ear. With more than 100 genes already known to cause deafness in humans, there are many patients who may eventually benefit from this technology.”

Konstantina Stankovic, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School

The second paper used the new vector to deliver a “specific corrected gene in a mouse model of Usher syndrome, the most common genetic form of deaf-blindness that also impairs balance function.” The study, which was led by Harvard’s Gwenaëlle Géléoc, reported remarkable efficacy in restoring hearing to deaf mice that were treated soon after birth. The therapy also restored balance, “enabling the mice to stay on a rotating rod for longer periods without falling off.”

There is still a great deal of work to be done before the potential treatment can be bought to patients and the authors issued one caveat: Hearing was restored in mice that were treated straight from birth, but not in those when the therapy was delayed by 10 to 12 days. Further research will aim to determine the reasons for this, but as Jeffrey Holt, a co-author of the second paper, says, it is a “landmark study. Here we show, for the first time, that by delivering the correct gene sequence to a large number of sensory cells in the ear, we can restore both hearing and balance to near-normal levels.”

There is more in the news story on Harvard Medical School’s website, here.