Science | Interview
Eduardo Anitua – National Innovation Award 2021
The stomatologist from Álava received the award today from the Kings “for exceptionally embodying the innovative spirit at the service of people”
Eduardo Anitua (Vitoria, 1956) has received in Valencia from the hands of the Kings the 2021 National Innovation Award, granted by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. According to the jury, the stomatologist from Álava, founder in 1999 of the company Biotechnology Institute (BTI), embodies “in an exceptional way the innovative spirit at the service of people and the improvement of their health and quality of life”.
– The award is for an “innovative trajectory”. How it all started?
– It started 33 years ago to answer the questions we were asked in clinical practice.
– Questions of what kind?
– When I was a maxillofacial surgery student I wondered why some patients, when they underwent surgery, healed well and in others the regenerative capacity was greatly reduced. How could you get them all to heal well? To answer that question, we began to analyze what the biological mechanisms of tissue regeneration were. We are talking about a time when, regarding tissue regeneration, what we knew is that if you cut off a lizard’s tail, it grows back.
– And they were moving forward.
– In 1995 we did our first clinical research work. In parallel, oral implantology was born. We were the first to do it in Europe and we applied our research to it.
Heal and regenerate
– Are we talking about healing wounds?
– The important thing is not so much healing as regeneration. To heal is to produce a fibrous tissue where there is an injury and to regenerate is to recover the original tissue. If there is an injury to the bone, a bone callus forms; if it is in a muscle, let the muscle regenerate; if it’s on the skin, let it be skin…
– How is it achieved?
– We discovered that there are some proteins in the blood that are responsible for tissue regeneration. At the end of the last century, we gave them the name of growth factors. They are the biochemical signals that tell a pluripotential cell that it has to become bone, muscle, cartilage, skin…
Eduardio Anitua, after receiving the National Innovation Award from the Kings. /
– It looks like magic.
– It’s biology. 50 years ago you could say it was magic. Today we know what it means to understand the biological mechanisms of tissue regeneration.
– When you started, did you suspect at some point that what you were going to discover would have applications in an area such as facial rejuvenation?
– When we began to see the results, I was certain that we had achieved something that, furthermore, no one else in the world had achieved.
– In 1999, he founded the BTI, which combines research and clinical practice. How many investigators do you have?
– At the BTI we are about 400 people, of which 300 are in Vitoria. More than 50 are dedicated exclusively to research in a multidisciplinary team with computer engineers, mechanical engineers, biologists, doctors… We have offices in eight countries and a presence in more than forty.
private R&D
– In 2017, your laboratory was the Spanish firm with the highest scientific production…
– We have been the biomedicine company with the greatest scientific production for six or seven years.
– How is that possible?
– Double bass. We look for the answer to a question, but in medicine we also have to look for the evidence, that the answer has a solid scientific basis. That can take you ten years of work.
– In Spain, private investment in R&D accounts for 30% of the total, much less than in Germany, Japan, South Korea…
– 90% of what the BTI has invested in research and development is private money. The great challenge facing Spain is the industrialization of knowledge. Investigating is very good, but reaching the end of the investigation is not getting a good article in a good magazine, but that it reaches the patient. We must ensure that innovations reach society.
– What can be done to industrialize knowledge?
– In Spain, in the Basque Country, there is a lot of talent, but there are not so many opportunities for it to grow. Those opportunities are not only publicly funded laboratories, but also an industry that develops that knowledge and transfers it to society. If you also manage to export it, like the BTI…
#great #challenge #Spain #industrialize #knowledge