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Wallonia, an innovation hub in human health

Interview with Mr Willy BORSUS, Vice-President of the Walloon Region and Minister of Economy, Foreign Trade, Research and Innovation, New Technologies, Urban an Spatial Planning, Agriculture, IFAPME and Competence Centers

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What are the main axes of the regional policy for support of research and innovation? The European Union calls on the regions to focus their resources on areas of research and innovation for which they have the best assets as compared to other European regions. These must be defined within the framework of an evolutionary document called RIS3 “Research & Innovation Smart Specialization Strategy.”

An in-depth discussion was conducted with all Walloon stakeholders in research and innovation that resulted in the identification of 33 new priority domains in Research and Innovation, divided into 12 strategic domains: • Health (biopharmaceuticals, radiation applied to human health, and medical devices); • Civil security (cyber security, capacities to better prevent, manage and reduce disaster risks, and innovative approaches and technologies for security practitioners); • Digital (Internet of Things, digital twins & simulations and artificial intelligence) and Industry (advanced materials, advanced manufacturing and circular industry); • Climate (management and reuse of CO 2 in production processes, and climate projection), Energy (smart and integrated communities, integrated building energy storage and efficiency systems) and Mobility (traffic and network management, new fuels and sustainable vehicles and rail technology); • Bio-economy (industrial biotechnologies and bio-sourced molecules and materials), Agrifood (sustainable and circular agrifood systems, food quality and safety and nutritional ingredients) and Natural resources (ecosystem management and conservation and ecosystem rehabilitation/restoration); • Aeronautics (modelling, simulation & digitalisation, advanced materials and on-board technologies and sub-systems); • Defence (life cycle support and service, smart standalone/ embedded systems and arms systems / effectors / integration and protection elements).

This is a first essential step, but the work will need to be continued with the new Walloon Government. Together with the Government, we intend to actively support Research and Innovation with a view to optimising, amplifying and accelerating the social, economic and ecological transition.

We therefore wish to increase public resources invested in the support of Innovation, reach the European target of 3% of GDP invested in research and development, and increase this target at European level to 4% by 2035 and 5% by 2050, with one third coming from the public sector. For us, Research, Development and Innovation are priorities and, as the new minister responsible for these matters, they will have my total support.

Can you give us a few examples of innovative Walloon companies that have thrived or continued their development thanks to the subsidies from the Walloon Government? There is a lot of innovative companies in Wallonia. In the field of well-being, I think of BOTALYS, formerly Green2chem, which has developed a new method for cultivating ginseng, earning them their first Seal of Excellence. This aid allows the “recovery” of European files that were evaluated very favourably but could not be financed due to budget constraints. In recycling, COMET TRAITEMENT (recycling of non-ferrous and ferrous metals) also received subsidies. The same goes for STÜV, which designs and manufactures wood stoves, pellet stoves, wood inserts, etc., and e-peas, which develops microsystems enabling the deployment of wireless capture solutions consuming as little energy as possible. Other examples are HyFoodTech, a CELABOR+ETA Jean Gielen spin-off; Aerospacelab; Coexpair, a global leader in technologies for the manufacture of composite materials for aeronautics; LASEA, which specialises in high-precision laser machining; I-CARE, a leader in predictive maintenance and reliability in Industry 4.0; TESSARES; ODOO and GAMBIT in digitalisation etc.

The health sector is also very well represented with Bone Therapeutics (bone cell therapy); Zoetis Belgium (international animal health company); Tool4Patient (development of patient characterisation tools); ZenTech (diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases); Celyad (development of cell therapies in the clinical stage); Cluepoint (statistical tool for anomaly detection in clinical trials) etc.

Digital technology is the centre of attention for the Minister-President at the Smart City trade fair.

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Visit of the Alipa Group, global industrial lifting and packaging specialist

How do you support the regional competitiveness clusters? The competitiveness clusters are and will remain a key element of Wallonia’s industrial strategy and their operation can be further improved to make them more impactful. They fit in with Wallonia’s smart specialisation strategy (RIS3) and are all concerned with the development of digital jobs that allow companies to grow more quickly. We will see to it that cooperations between existing stakeholders (clusters, UAP etc.) are strengthened, in partnership with the Brussels-Capital Region.

It is in fact important to strengthen the cohesion and integration of the clusters by encouraging and multiplying collaborations between them. We will encourage synergies and collaborations between large enterprises and SMEs, in particular through structural and locally anchored projects. We will also enhance the accessibility of SMEs to the competitiveness clusters and research centres (innovation centres, transversal platforms, clustering of best teams etc.).

The government intends to strengthen the culture of calls for projects within the competitiveness clusters. A first step towards this goal has been made with two clear objectives: to reduce decision times and encourage the participation of innovative SMEs. It is also clear that a breakthrough innovation that provides added value as well as jobs for Wallonia is far more likely to emerge from inter-cluster projects than from projects led by a single cluster. I would cite as an example the Walloon Med-Tech initiative, a product of the collaboration between Biowin and Mecatech. In the same vein, yesterday’s growth sectors are not necessarily tomorrow’s growth sectors. We need to adapt to reality in order to develop a dynamic economy capable of supporting the well-being of all.

What research projects do you support in the area of human health? The Walloon Region supports on average 145 projects per year in the field of human health. Since 2012, more than 200 different companies have benefited from this aid. In all, over 40% of the regional resources are allocated to companies in this sector.

The funding mechanism in the form of repayable advances (more than 56% of cases) allows the funding of research projects focusing on the development of products and processes, including the associated preclinical, clinical and regulatory validations. Moreover, subsidies make it possible to establish concept feasibility and work on product and process development in the laboratory before performing any studies in the regulatory environment. These are mainly projects on cellular therapy, medical devices, small chemical molecules and biological molecules. These alone represent 69% of financial commitments. However, we should not forget data health.

This financial aid mainly benefits small companies. Large companies represent fewer than 5% of applications and less than 6% of resources committed. It is for good reason that Wallonia is internationally recognised as an innovation hub in this field.

In your opinion, what are the main challenges that Wallonia will face in the coming years? Wallonia needs to continue to diversify its research financing sources and provide more incentives to enterprises, both large and small, to capture a substantial share of the budgets made available by Europe as part of future programming, be it as a partner or coordinator. The message here is to increase the number of project submissions.

The inclusion of SMEs in European - but also regional - research projects is also a priority, as is the economic promotion of research results and technology transfers from academic institutions to the industrial fabric. I also consider it important for the universities of the Wallonia Brussels Federation to be more effective at transforming the results of their research activities into a source for fundamental research funding, with a view to creating a true virtuous research cycle.