Aeon Astron Europe, a Leiden BioScience Park (The Netherlands)-based biomedical company, has received an innovation credit of over €3m from the new SME Innovation Credit fund (Innovatiefonds MKB+).
The company intends to use the credit to further develop an artificial cornea made of fish scale material through a variety of preclinical and clinical trials, both in the Netherlands and worldwide. Aeon Astron Europe has plans to build a clean room and seven laboratories (with a production unit is already in preparation), as well as to increase the number of employees from the present six to at least 25 and possibly 50.
A wholly owned subsidiary of the Taiwanese company Body Organ Biomedical Corporation (BOBC), a developer of new tissue regeneration products, especially in ophthalmology, such as an artificial cornea (biocornea) and a biolens, the company is responsible for introducing these products onto the global market. It is led by CEO Michael Lai and Vice-President Ingrid Vodegel
The loan, by Innovatiefonds MKB+, which was launched in January 2012, is a reinvestment of an earlier innovation credit repaid by the SME company Sim Industries, a manufacturer of aviation simulators.
Aeon Astron is also working on biolens, based on collagen in collaboration with the LUMC in Leiden and the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan.
FinSMEs
14/02/2012