#BIOSPAIN2025 | “Our participation in BIOSPAIN represents a strategic opportunity for Navarra”

As part of BIOSPAIN 2025, which will be held in Barcelona from October 7 to 9, we had the opportunity to speak with Garbiñe Basterra, Director General for Energy and Digital Transition, Business R&D&I and Entrepreneurship at the Government of Navarra; Iñaki Larraya, Managing Director of the Navarra Development Company (Sodena); and Uxue Itoiz, Managing Director of CEIN. Navarra is participating as a Gold Sponsor of the event with the aim of strengthening its positioning as a leading region in the field of synthetic biology, a strategic area with great potential for business, scientific and social development.

The Autonomous Community has an innovative and growing ecosystem, sustained by knowledge-generating agents, a solid educational offering, advanced infrastructures and companies linked to the sector. Among the most notable initiatives are the synthetic biology laboratory IrisLab and the BioSintNA Business Development Plan, which will be presented at the end of this year to position Navarra as an international benchmark in this discipline.

During the interview, the institutional representatives underline how synthetic biology is integrated into the roadmap of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S4), the role played by the Navarra Development Company (Sodena) in consolidating the business fabric, and CEIN’s support for entrepreneurship and technology transfer. A shared vision that reflects Navarra’s ambition to establish itself as a European hub in synthetic biology, capable of generating qualified employment, attracting investment and providing innovative solutions to global challenges in health, energy, food and sustainability.

Garbiñe Basterra, Director General for Energy and Digital Transition, Business R&D&I and Entrepreneurship of the Government of Navarra

AseBio. Navarra has positioned synthetic biology as a strategic area for its economic and social development. What role does this discipline play in the roadmap of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S4) of the Autonomous Community?

Garbiñe Basterra. At this moment, synthetic biology is booming worldwide, driven by scientific advances and growing investment. It is estimated that the global synthetic biology market will exceed 36 billion euros by 2030, with an annual growth close to 20%.

Navarra wants to seize this opportunity to become a reference region, since many of the applications of synthetic biology coincide with the strategic priorities of the S4, such as health, renewable energies and agri-food, together with new emerging niches of the manufacturing industry, such as the aerospace sector and industrialized construction.

The health sector currently accounts for more than 50% of the value of the biotechnology market, followed by food (35.2%) and energy (9.9%), which reflects its economic importance and its strategic nature in key areas for future development.
The Navarra BioSintNA Business Plan responds to this situation and proposes a path to turn Navarra into a benchmark in the field of synthetic biology, thanks to its expanding scientific, technological and business ecosystem, capable of generating qualified employment and providing innovative solutions to global challenges.

AseBio. What key elements does Navarra have to make possible the boost to biotechnology and, more specifically, synthetic biology?

Garbiñe Basterra. Navarra’s innovation and business ecosystem is made up of a fabric of companies, universities and research centers, clusters and the Government of Navarra itself. This inter-institutional collaboration prioritizes the transfer of knowledge to industry and has positioned our region as a “Notable Innovator” according to the European Union, thanks to its culture of innovation and its focus on creating added value through technology.

Navarra has several research and technology centers, universities and professional associations that act as drivers of innovation, generating and transferring science and technology to industries. At the same time, Navarra’s clusters and business associations facilitate collaboration and joint action among different actors in the ecosystem. In all these relationships, the public-private collaboration fostered by the Government of Navarra and other public administrations is key to promoting innovation policies and strategies, working in synergy with other companies and institutions, such as territorial development agents, entrepreneurship support organizations and other entities. All of them are essential to transform knowledge into industrial development, attracting talent and investment.

Specifically, in biotechnology, the key components of the ecosystem are: the IRIS Navarra Digital Innovation Hub, which supports companies and organizations in innovation processes and serves as a meeting point for knowledge and collaboration; the Navarra R&D&I System (SINAI), a coordinated network of public and private agents that collaborate to generate and transfer knowledge through research, development and innovation; Navarrabiomed, a facilitator of biomedical research to implement and develop therapies that improve the quality of the public health system; the Navarra Health Service-Osasunbidea, which integrates biomedical research within the Navarra Institute for Health Research (IdiSNA); the Public University of Navarra; the University of Navarra and its Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA). To these are added the bodies that promote entrepreneurship and provide support to biotech startups, such as the European Business and Innovation Centre of Navarra (CEIN) and the Navarra Development Company (Sodena), responsible for leading the business plan in this sector, BioSintNA. Finally, the Navarra Health Cluster, as the association that brings together companies and organizations in the health sector.

Iñaki Larraya, Managing Director of the Navarra Development Company (Sodena)

AseBio. Talking about biotechnology business activity in Navarra obviously means talking about Sodena. What has been and is Sodena’s role in this field and more specifically in synthetic biology?

Iñaki Larraya. As the Government of Navarra’s financial instrument, we have supported the sector for three decades, initially with a greater focus on biomedicine, both with direct investment and through specialized funds, and always with a co-investment strategy and strategic support. Thanks to this, it has been possible to create startups, boost and support their growth, achieving that some of them have consolidated as companies of international reference and collaborate with large pharmaceutical companies or have attracted the interest of specialized funds, and connections with research centers and reference forums have been fostered.

According to the latest available data on socioeconomic impact (2023), Sodena’s financial support through equity investment in companies linked to biomedicine amounts to more than 43 million euros, distributed among 28 companies. This support has allowed companies to multiply that amount more than five times to drive the development of their projects, achieving that almost half of them reach international presence. As a result, they have generated aggregate sales of more than 110 million euros and have contributed to the creation of more than 1,100 jobs.

Likewise, Sodena has been able to position itself and build alliances with entities such as AseBio, which give us the opportunity to give visibility to this Navarrese ecosystem and to learn a great deal about the sector and its evolution. Not for nothing we hosted in 2010 and 2021 the celebration of Biospain and in 2020 and 2024 that of the Green Innovation Forum.

As a result of this trajectory, today our work in biotechnology, and more recently in synthetic biology, goes beyond financial contribution. Thus, from Sodena and on behalf of the Government of Navarra, as mentioned before, we are leading BioSintNA, the business development plan in this field that will be launched at the end of this year.

The objective of this project is to structure and coordinate an ecosystem with international projection, promoting public-private collaborations, working together with companies to identify opportunities and develop capacities that allow them to take full advantage of the potential offered by synthetic biology, as well as accompanying those that want to establish themselves in Navarra.

To this end, Sodena has the collaboration of CEIN, a public company that promotes entrepreneurship; of Nasertic, which manages, among others, the IRIS Lab infrastructure, which includes the synthetic biology laboratory, with state-of-the-art equipment in Europe; and, of course, of business clusters, research centers and universities, as well as the business ecosystem.

And last but not least, together with SILO, a consultancy specialized in health and biotechnology innovation, we are currently reviewing and planning the actions of this business development plan for synthetic biology, BioSintNA.

AseBio. Tell us more about BioSintNA. What would be its main areas of action? What challenges will it face?

Iñaki Larraya. The main areas of action include giving international visibility to our capabilities while also seeking collaboration with third parties, training and retaining highly qualified talent, promoting and developing the business fabric, ensuring responsible development in regulatory and ethical matters by transferring to society the capacities that synthetic biology provides us, and equipping the territory with shared infrastructures that allow the leap from research to market.

The challenges, however, are not minor. We need professionals with very specialized profiles, to overcome regulatory and normative obstacles, to improve public perception, and—something very important—to standardize tools and mobilize financing for industrial scale-up. All this in a very demanding global context that foresees 20% growth in the next 5 years. Despite these difficulties, we have a solid base—a growing ecosystem of technology centers and companies—and a clear roadmap. From Sodena we will continue working so that Navarra turns this challenge into an opportunity for the bioeconomy to become a reality in our Autonomous Community.

Uxue Itoiz, Managing Director of the European Business and Innovation Centre of Navarra (CEIN)

AseBio. Synthetic biology requires environments that promote innovation and technology transfer. What CEIN programs or initiatives are aimed at supporting entrepreneurs and new companies in this field?

Uxue Itoiz. At CEIN we have a wide range of services to promote the development of entrepreneurial processes in the field of synthetic biology. We encourage entrepreneurship in the science and technology producing centers of the region through, for example, technology valorization services as a way of transferring spin-offs. Likewise, we provide support and guidance so that startups in Navarra’s ecosystem can integrate synthetic biology as an enabling technology, with the aim of developing new products/services in diverse sectors of activity and opening new business units.

We also focus on detecting entrepreneurial talent, with a program that we direct at master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral students linked to biotechnology, focused on innovation as a professional path and on identifying new entrepreneurship opportunities.

In addition, we promote the deployment of the entrepreneurial ecosystem with the main actors of the value chain around synthetic biology, especially with startups, as well as new infrastructures to jointly identify and address aspects of common interest and new challenges.

AseBio. In an ecosystem that combines science, business and society, how does CEIN contribute to generating collaborations that strengthen the value chain in synthetic biology inside and outside Navarra?

Uxue Itoiz. On the one hand, through work with the startups in our Innovation Incubators. 40% of them are biotech and generate approximately 60% of the incubators’ employment, which is why we consider them key levers so that the new solutions provided by synthetic biology can reach society. On the other hand, we collaborate with the Navarra Digital Innovation Hub IRIS-EDIH, universities and clusters in our territory, aligning activities and pooling capacities to drive the ecosystem.

And, of course, we are actively participating in the development of the Synthetic Biology Business Plan, BioSintNA, led by Sodena, with which we seek to make the Autonomous Community a benchmark player in this field. In this process, interaction and cooperation between the different agents involved is constant.

Joint Response

AseBio. Navarra presents itself at BIOSPAIN 2025 as Gold Sponsor. Why have you decided to support this reference event and what expectations do you have for your participation in terms of visibility, talent attraction and boosting Navarra’s synthetic biology ecosystem?

Our participation in Biospain represents a strategic opportunity for Navarra. Firstly, in terms of visibility, it will allow us to show at national and international level the commitment that the Government of Navarra has been making to biotechnology, and in particular to synthetic biology, a field in which we want to position the Autonomous Community as a reference.

Secondly, it constitutes an ideal showcase for attracting talent. Navarra has a solid ecosystem—with universities, technology and research centers, hospitals and companies—but it needs to continue strengthening its capabilities with highly qualified profiles. Being present at a forum such as Biospain facilitates connections with researchers, entrepreneurs and professionals who are looking for a dynamic environment in which to develop their career.

Finally, this event is key to boosting Navarra’s synthetic biology ecosystem. We work in a coordinated way to support startups and SMEs in their growth, facilitate access to financing and incubation spaces, and connect with investors and international partners. In addition, we want to attract companies that are looking for a competitive and collaborative place to establish themselves and develop in this field. Biospain offers us the perfect platform to open up new collaboration opportunities and accelerate the materialization of business projects that consolidate Navarra as an innovation hub in this field.