The project CE4BIG – Cluster Excellence for Business Innovation and Growth in the Health Sector, was selected to receive funding under the EU COSME  “European Cluster Excellence” initiative, which aims to foster cluster collaboration on a European-wide scale. The ultimate objective is to strengthen both, clusters and SMEs, to jointly master global competition and work on the answers to the challenges of personalized medicine.

CE4BIG federates 4 European healthcare clusters, with similar regional smart specialization strategies supporting the development of advanced therapies for personalized medicine. The consortium consists of the project leader, Atlanpole Biotherapies from France, BioM from Germany, BioWin from Belgium and Life Science Krakow from Poland.

The project intends to promote business growth and raise the innovation capacity of SMEs. Professional cluster services will be optimized through targeted activities including the ClusterXchange scheme, which enables and fosters cross-border collaboration between innovation stakeholders (businesses, CROs, research units, etc.) in the innovation ecosystems of the project partners. The exchanges aim at helping SMEs within the partnership, design and fine-tune their business models, develop new partnerships, seize new business opportunities abroad and secure funding for business and innovation to reach proof of technology and grow beyond. The exchanges also enhance the innovation process by providing professional and sector-specific support to bio-entrepreneurs and start-ups. The project will also benefit cluster management and strategic skills through customized training and transnational cluster-to-cluster missions.