Business idea awarded at “Born from Knowledge” competition

Extraction of antibodies from the egg yolk developed by Mara Freire, João Coutinho, Márcia Neves, and Sandra Bernardo won the competition in Health category.

A sustainable and more effective technology in the antibodies extraction from the egg yolk to act against resistant bacterial infections, proposed by researchers from CICECO / University of Aveiro (UA), won the Born fom Knowledge competition in the Health category.

The business idea, PurAvTec, presented in this national contest promoted by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, through the National Agency of Innovation (ANI), was one of the winners known on December 12 , at PCI-Creative Science Park. This final phase, with 18 teams representing several higher education institutions, was the end of a process that involved the selection of ideas and teams from each institution and also a two-day formation to prepare the final pitch.

The team consisting of Mara Freire, João Coutinho, Márcia Neves and Sandra Bernardo, researchers from CICECO and the Department of Chemistry, won the Born from Knowledge contest, which brings together the best business ideas born of scientific and/or technological knowledge. The objective of the initiative is to promote a culture of valorization of scientific and technological knowledge in Portugal, distinguishing and rewarding good practices and success stories, ideas that answer to societal challenges and contribute to the economy development.

The PurAvTec business idea results from the work developed in the IgYPurTech project, whose goal is to develop a sustainable technology for the purification of egg yolk antibodies and to develop inexpensive natural biopharmaceuticals that are more effective than some of the current antibiotics. This project has been supported by a grant from the European Research Council.

Mara Freire, coordinator of the IgYPurTech project and the proponent of this business idea, estimates that if everything goes as planned, it will be possible to reach to a market solution in 2028.