I visited the van ’t Hoff lecture and the one-day conference about nano-medicines, both at Delft University of Technology, 3rd and 4th of July 2025. Here are some key points of these conferences:
Nanomedicine Grows Big
Nanomedicines are now produced at commercial scale. Start-up companies play a pivotal role in this by their research, development, and commercialization. Daniel Anderson of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) provided the following key steps for start-up companies in this field:
- Have a good idea
- Patent the idea
- Write a big paper in a journal with high impact
- Find the right venture capitalist to provide money for scale-up
- Surround you with the right people, at the right place
In addition, he mentioned that a good idea may be also useful for a different industry branch such as cosmetics. The example he gave was a degradable biopolymer originally developed for human healthcare, which was also attractive in the cosmetic industry.
Simon Geissler of Merck noted that the European Medicine Agency (EMA) and the USA Food and Drug Agency (FDA) now are in favour of continuous processes for pharma products, because of better quality control.