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A very good morning to all of you.
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And I would like to say that first of all, I'm thanking thankful to the organisers for me in this approximately to talk about this initiative which we have started in Greece.
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And we'll also like to congratulate the organisers for the selection of the dates for this conference because the Art Basel was from 18th to 22nd and it just overlapped with that.
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So I was fortunate to be here on Sunday and got, I was lucky to get into the Art Basel museums and it was awesome.
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It was overwhelming.
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I just thought I, it felt like I was stepping into an epicentre of World Global Art Club actually.
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And then it was awesome.
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It was overwhelming mix of visual spectacles, intellectual pro provocation.
0:58
Awesome.
0:59
So thank you once again for that.
1:01
And so just would like to start with some of the, this is from Didier William, some of the pieces which I just saw there, more than 42 countries participated.
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Lot of statements, feature, edition, galleries.
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So it was out of the world experience and rightly getting into the conference here because as we know, art and science are deeply interconnected disciplines where art basically it interprets the human behaviour, and it gives a form to the expression.
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Whereas science is all about the facts and the explanation through evidence.
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So together art and science I think are driving the innovation, the creativity, or even enhancing our understanding of what is a possibility and what's a reality.
1:59
So thank you for inviting me.
2:02
It's an honour to be here.
2:04
So I'm going to talk about an initiative we have taken in Greece.
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So the moment I say Greece, the only thing that comes in your mind would be a beautiful islands, a holiday destination and clear, crystal clear blue seas, every corner cowed with marble and sunlight, the Mikonos, Santorini or whatever islands.
2:37
But yeah, so we're trying to change the landscape here and we are coming up in Athens with, I would say Greece's largest biotech park.
2:46
So it's called Athens LifeTech Park.
2:49
And we are actually open for collaborations.
2:52
And I mean we have put a lot on lot of effort as you are already seen that Greece was not in the map when it comes to bio-innovation or biotech industrialization.
3:04
But now the landscape is changing, and I see a lot of interest and even government is also helping now.
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So this is what we have come up with.
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It's called Athens LifeTech Park.
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This is basically located almost 10 kilometres from the International Airport and it's next to 11th largest data centre of Microsoft.
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It's also coming up right next to this site.
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So this is based in Sparta, so just I would say 15 minutes’ drive from the International Airport.
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So we have setup ALTP with the mission to become a global catalyst for life science innovation based in Greece.
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And we have a pretty aggressive mission to advance the early stage drug discovery and development for the benefit of patients worldwide.
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This is the management and the Advisory Board.
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So Eleni Pentafragka is our Executive Chairman of the board.
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We have a very interesting Advisory Board.
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Dimitris Agrafiotis, Harvard graduate with lots of experience in Pfizer, LabCorp, Cosmas is RA venture from Boston.
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George Kollias, again, a very renowned scientist from Greece who's worked a lot on TNF, genetic variations in TNF and come up.
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He came up, his lab came up with the humanised mice model as well.
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And Dimitris Skokos, he is with Regeneron.
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So basically this is the biotech incubator.
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So we have 3 pillars based in Athens LifeTech Park.
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The first one is innovation and entrepreneurship where we really want to, we want to encourage start-ups all the way from idea or the concept to the clinical stage.
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And throughout the journey.
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We want to help them with all kinds of mentorship, infrastructure, Technical Support and even funding.
5:04
We already have Preclinical Research Services in the next couple of slides I'll talk about it just to support all kind of proof of concept and screening in early stage.
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We also have Translational Research Services as well.
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So these are all the functions which will support the bioincubator.
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So that’s the incubator, we have a wet lab infrastructure.
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The whole ALTP is basically in 60,000 square metres of area.
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We are 350 metres where 60 bench spaces are available for the start-ups, private lab spaces there they are suits, they're table spaces available for the labs.
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And then we have all the support functions which are required for the ecosystem of start-ups.
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So starting from the core facilities with all the omics capability, proteomics, genomics, metabolomics capability, we are developing, which can be as a support function to the start-ups.
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We also have preclinical capabilities and what we have done is we have mapped and aligned all the clinical sites within Greece.
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So if at all there are any startups who have molecules or products in advanced stage, we can support them with the clinical intervention.
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And of course without the funding, no startup can really work.
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So we have, we are actually aligning a lot of VCs so that they can always be available whenever the funding is required by the startups.
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And we also have access to European Union fund of around 200 million and we are actively pursuing that as well so that VCs can be aligned and that one can also be available for the start-ups who will operate from here.
6:48
And Greece, for some reason, the supply chain and the logistics are not that well evolved.
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So what we decided is when we are planning this, we should come up with a centralised supply and logistics support system.
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So we are coming up with that as well and we are aligned with all the universities so that we can hire the top talent at the earliest.
7:13
And apart from that from legal perspective, from mentoring on business development, finance, project management, all those support functions will be there to support this ecosystem.
7:28
This is about preclinical, which is already operational.
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We've got around 25 years of experience working with swine and mini pig models.
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All the in vitro, in vivo, ADME pharmacology, disease models, toxicology models are all well evolved.
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We have a very good biomedical team also in place who can do all kind of quantifications.
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And then I would say that in the animal facility, all the technicians, veterinarians, everybody's FELASA certified.
8:00
So this is which is these are the services which are already available.
8:04
Now as I said in rodents and non-rodents, the lab is as of now non GLP, but to support the start-ups in exploratory phase, I think that non GLP should be fine.
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But going forward we'll also go for a GLP certification as well.
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So this is all about preclinical capabilities.
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Right now we are operating from two of the sites, Pikermi and Melissia.
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But from Q1 of 2026, this park will be operational, and we all these facilities will be integrated into the same place in Sparta.
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So as of now, the preclinical services we are also offering as a standalone CRO.
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And again, the whole mission is a nonprofit.
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So I can vouch for it that the quality of the work is at par with any other premium CROs.
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But when it comes to the costing, they are really quite affordable, all the services.
9:00
Finally, we have transitional research hub, which is again we are hosting innovative research projects and collaborations.
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So we already are doing a few projects.
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So one of them is Genesis where we are trying to characterise the diversity of HLA genome region and I think more than 3000 samples.
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So we are already collecting.
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So this is an ongoing project.
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So we also would like to welcome, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome any strategic collaborations or any innovative startups in the area of biotech or life sciences.
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You're more than happy to reach out to us and we'll be more than happy to host you.
9:41
And why Greece?
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Because this is a question often asked that why should somebody come to Greece apart from tourism.
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So these are a few of the things which we thought that this can really help because important is the competitive pricing.
9:57
Compare any countries within Europe or US, the operational costs are definitely competitive.
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So that is one of the important reason.
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Of course, we have highly skilled talent pool.
10:07
So we have networked with all the industrial, all the premium universities there, the regulatory compliance it is with EMEA.
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So even that's an advantage.
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There's a geographical advantage because both Europe and the US or the Middle East, it is as an entry port and convenient time zone like compared to Far East or Asian countries.
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It's better to work with European countries and Greece is like within the sizable time frame.
10:37
So I would say this is this are the reasons why somebody should come to Greece.
10:45
Four months ago, I've taken this picture, but I'm done.
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This is last night.
10:51
Yeah.
10:52
So this is the picture four months prior.
10:57
But right now we are completed 80% of it and by end of this year, December it will be completed and we'll be moving into this facility 2026 Q1.
11:07
So that's all and thank you.
11:10
Thank you for your patience.