French life scientist with a snake poison project

The basic business idea is to provide better treatment for poisonous snakebites by replacing current anti-venom products with safer and more affordable methods, and was presented at the Venture Cup finals last week.

Guillaume Blanc, together with fellow team mates Andreas Laustsen., Mikael Engmark, and Jens Kringelum from DTU, presented their start up idea: VenomAb.

Guillaume is French and has an MSc in Life Science, with a technical expertise in Biochemistry. He has worked in different countries before arriving to Denmark, where he has for the last year and a half worked as a research assistant at UCPH. Two months ago his team started preparing for Venture Cup.

Making a difference

VenomAb want to target Sub-Saharan Africa where they will work together with local healthcare providers and NGO’s to provide safer treatment for children, women, and farmers.

»It is inspiring to work with something that people actually need, and to know that my knowledge has the possibility to make a real difference for other people.« Guillaume says.

As it turned out, VenomAb didn’t win Venture Cup, but that is not important says Guillaume: »Even if we didn’t win, it was a great experience for me as an entrepreneur. We were up against some hard competition. We will now discuss if we will continue working on our idea.«

More entrepreneurial spirit

Guillaume thinks there is a need for better cooperation between the science field and entrepreneurship. »There are so many great brains out there, but scientists needs to be better trained in fields related to entrepreneurship and business to be able to turn their knowledge and ideas into something real.«

He has seen a trend of more entrepreneurial spirit during the time he has spent in Copenhagen and at the university. There is still a long way to go, but he thinks the combination of innovation and science is on the right track.

»I would really like to help scientists and entrepreneurs turn their business ideas into reality.«

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

Stay in the know about news and events happening in Copenhagen by signing up for the University Post’s weekly newsletter here.