Mind the byte granted funding from the european union sme instrument

mind the byte — a company specializing in the provision of services and solutions in computational drug design based at parc cientific de barcelona (pcb) — has been selected in the last call of the sme instrument of the european commission and will receive 50,000 euros to carry out the feasibility study of the datanimbus project with the ultimate goal of bringing it to market. 

datanimbus uses big data techniques for processing large amounts of omics data (such as genomics and proteomics) and its application in personalized medicine. under the horizon 2020 (h2020) framework, the european commission is encouraging the participation of smes in research and development projects in innovative fields such as life sciences and health. one funding routes being implemented is the sme instrument, which consists of three phases: analysis of technical and economic feasibility, project development and support innovation in marketing. once the first phase of the project is rolled out, mind the byte plans to apply to the second phase endowed with a funding between 0.5 and 2 million euros. 

the generalitat de catalunya, through accio – the agency for business competitiveness- advises and supports catalan companies in the h2020 calls, among which is mind the byte. according to mariona sanz, director of the business innovation unit acció “catalonia is one of the european regions that is participating the most in this program, which has a budget of 3,000 million euros. it is an extremely competitive program with success rates below 10%”. 

the founder and ceo of mind the byte, alfons nonell-canals, does not hide his satisfaction with this recognition: “it’s great news, and the result of perseverance and good work. we are happy to go ahead with the project and see how our commitment to cloud technology and big data is on the right track.” nonell-canals also considers that the support received from the accio is key to being competitive in this type of calls. 

since its foundation, mind the byte has relied heavily on european funding to develop large research projects. in september 2013, it became a partner in translink, where it developed new molecules to avoid rejection of animal-origin cardiac valves. it also participates at cost action chemical approaches to targeting drug resistance in cancer stem cells (2012-2016) and in challenging organic syntheses inspired by nature – from natural products chemistry to drug discovery (2015-2019). 

mind the byte was founded in 2011 by alfons nonell-canals, who holds a phd in computational chemistry and is a specialist in computer-aided drug design and in large-scale chemical and biological analyses. the company, located in the barcelona science park has two business lines: development and marketing of advanced pay-to-use software via the saas (software as service) technological platform —a market pioneer in this area, and personalised services of computational chemistry for biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies, institutions and research groups worldwide all who are committed to reducing the cost of drug research and development and speed up the time to market for new medicines (a time of between 1 to 3 years). in 2013 mind the byte became a tech partner of amazon web services and member of the microsoft bizspark plus programme. at the end of 2014 the firm closed a capital enlargement round headed by the biotechnological group inkemia.