#NewMember | "AseBio is both the place to meet other companies in the industry and the voice of Spanish biotech in society"

AseBio. What does your company's work bring to the table and what is its strength?

Maribel Berges. Affirma Biotech is a start-up focused on the discovery and development of new anti-infective drugs through the activation of the immune system. This is a highly innovative mechanism of action, and we expect to provide new solutions against both chronic and resistant infections in the near future. Our first indication is chronic hepatitis b, and later, we will address other challenging indications such as Epstein-Barr virus or infections caused by resistant bacteria.

AseBio. What is AseBio for you?

Maribel Berges. For us AseBio is both the place to meet other companies in the industry and the voice of Spanish biotech in society. We think that being part of the association will be a great opportunity to maintain our relations to other start-ups, suppliers, investors, and research centers, that will be key in our future research and business activities. We also expect to contribute to explain to society the importance of having a strong innovative sector, that can transform the research findings developed by academia in actual tools to improve people’s health and quality of life.

AseBio. When did you first hear about AseBio?

Maribel Berges. I was in the Board of Asebio in my previous company Janus Developments. It was a great experience to be able to collaborate with other companies to create a strategic plan for the association that has contributed to its current strength and projection.

AseBio. What do you expect from being part of an association like AseBio?

Maribel Berges. We expect to participate in different networking events, like BioSpain or Asebio Investor’s Day, that provide enormous value to our business development activities. We also expect to contribute to communicate to society the importance of the task that all the companies in the biotech field are doing, by developing new treatments for challenging diseases, contributing to the improvement of crops and food production and improving the environmental impact of several key industrial processes. 

AseBio. What is the biggest challenge facing the biotech sector (or your company)?

The biotech sector in Spain has been constantly growing for the past few years, now the biggest challenge is to consolidate this growth with successful exit operations that will allow investors to repeat the cycle of innovation-investment-commercialization. We are convinced that this process, that has already started, will continue to be a success in the next years.