SUISSE News Spring 2024
Business
Business
April 2024
Business News (April 2024)
Switzerland crowned world champion for patents again
A total of 9,410 patents were filed with the European Patent Office from Switzerland in 2023. This means that the country again tops the charts in terms of the number of patent applications on a per capita basis. In addition, Switzerland actually recorded more patent applications than ever before.
Last year, a total of 199,275 patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office (EPO), further details of which can be found in a press release issued by the EPO. Of these, a total of 9,410 came from Switzerland. As such, the Alpine nation set a new record value for patent filings with the EPO. In comparison with 2022, Switzerland recorded growth of +2.7 percent in terms of its patent applications filed with the EPO.
In terms of patent applications per million inhabitants, Switzerland retained the global top spot that it has occupied in recent years. In specific terms, 1,085.31 patents per one million inhabitants were filed with the EPO from Switzerland in 2023. In absolute terms, Switzerland occupied seventh place in the overall rankings, behind the USA, Germany, Japan, China, South Korea and France.
In Switzerland, Roche leads the way with a total of 754 patent applications with the EPO, followed by JT International with 706 patent applications. Third place goes to Philip Morris, which registered 527 patent applications in 2023. The list of the top ten Swiss companies is rounded off by ABB, Nestlé, The Swatch Group, Tetra Laval, Inventio AG (as part of the Schindler Group), Sika and TE Connectivity, which registered between 488 and 157 patent applications last year.
“Our latest Patent Index shows that innovation remained vibrant around the world in 2023”, comments António Campinos, President of the EPO, in the press release, adding that in the year under review his organization “was entrusted with examining more applications than ever before”. In the reporting year, the EPO also examined the contribution made by women to innovation for the first time. According to this data, 27 percent of all patent applications listed at least one woman as an inventor.
Drones navigate even dense forest
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich have developed an innovative drone for biodiversity identification in forests. It can even weave its way through branches.
A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Birmensdorf in the canton of Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), and the University of Pisa have developed a drone that can navigate its way through the branches of trees. The way that animals move was used as the model for this. According to a press release from the WSL, this is a vital step in recording the biodiversity of remote areas.
Drones usually perceive bushes and branches as an obstacle that must be avoided. However, it is precisely amongst the dense vegetation where valuable biodiversity monitoring data can be found. The WSL states that the researchers were inspired by animals, which can sense and react to anything coming into contact with the body when they move through vegetation. This meant that the researchers equipped the drone with the ability to recognize contact with the environment across its entire body. The drone is streamlined and built from low-friction material. Emanuele Aucone is the lead author of the study published on the project in Nature Communications. He states: “Our work makes an initial contribution towards monitoring currently unreachable areas.”
The team at the Environmental Robotics Lab run by the ETH and the WSL had already collected environmental DNA from individual branches using drones in previous studies, but they were unable to penetrate further into the treetops. Aucone adds: “Flexible obstacles like branches are especially challenging because they put oscillations on the drone when it tries to cross them. So we had to design the drone more specifically.”
The researcher believes that there are other possible applications for this drone besides biodiversity monitoring, such as precision agriculture or search and rescue.
Lombardi – Swiss Engineering to Combat Climate Change
The Lombardi Group, based in Giubiasco/TI, provides engineering services for demanding transport, underground and water-related infrastructures, focusing on renewable energy. Leveraging the expertise it has acquired by building Alpine hydropower plants and long transalpine railway tunnels in Switzerland, it exports this around the globe.
The Lombardi Group, headquartered in Giubiasco (Canton of Ticino), provides engineering services for demanding transport, underground and water-related infrastructures and leverages its expertise and technical know-how to deliver innovative, sustainable, and high-quality services. Driven by its independence and robust internal collaboration, the SME is able to compete with the largest global engineering companies, positioning itself among the top five worldwide in hydropower planning. Thanks to its tangible achievements and global expansion efforts, Lombardi has experienced robust organic growth in recent years, with 65 percent of its sales stemming from international markets.
Internationalization to secure expertise
From the outset, its export activity was driven by a desire to maintain and expand the know-how it had acquired in Switzerland. The company effectively utilizes the expertise acquired in the past, particularly from the construction of Alpine hydropower plants and long transalpine railway tunnels, deploying this knowledge worldwide.
Embedded in the local environment, engineering services from Switzerland
Fueled by its employee ownership system, as the company enters new markets with secured projects, the Swiss team deployed to the local country is deeply committed to transferring expertise and values to the local project team. This dedication extends to fostering relationships with partners and clients, building networks, and securing new projects. The successful international expansion is greatly attributed to our multicultural teams that enables a deep understanding of local cultures and needs. However, the coordination of the various offices worldwide, along with the management of major international projects, remains under the responsibility of the team located in Switzerland.
Execution of prestigious climate protection projects
“Our work has a strong focus on infrastructures in the field of renewable energies,” says CEO Matthias Neidhart. “This is illustrated by the hydro power plants that have been built in our primary target markets of Australia and Latin America.” Climate change is the driving force behind such projects. For example, Australia wants to use large pumped-storage power plants to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, while South America is responding to changing weather phenomena with new water supply and flood systems. The endeavor to expand into new geographical areas has consistently received significant support from Swiss embassies and the expertise provided by Switzerland Global Enterprise.
Zurich researchers make cancer therapy effective again
Researchers from the University of Zurich and University Hospital Zurich have discovered how mutated blood cancer cells can be made to respond to an immunotherapy approach again. Genetically enhanced immune cells used in combination with drugs can eliminate resistance in blood cancer cells.
A research team led by Markus Manz and Steffen Böttcher from the University of Zurich and Department of Medical Oncology and Hematology at University Hospital Zurich has discovered that acute myeloid leukemia (AML) blood cancer cells develop a resistance against the novel chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy in cases where a mutation occurs in the TP53 tumor suppressor gene. For this CAR T-cell immunotherapy, immune cells are taken from patients and genetically modified in the laboratory in such a way that more receptors are formed to identify the cancer cells.
“The reason for the poorer effect of CAR T-cells with mutated TP53 is that these immune cells are exhausted more quickly and are therefore less active against the cancer cells”, comments Steffen Böttcher, lead doctor in the research team, in a press release. Conventional chemotherapies are no longer effective in cases where resistance builds up.
In their study, the researchers decoded the mechanism of this resistance development in addition to working out how to increase the endurance of the CAR T-cells and how to therapeutically exploit a weak point in the AML cells with a mutated TP53 gene. With these genetically improved CAR T-cells or additional pharmacological concomitant therapy, the researchers were able to enhance the effectiveness of the CAR T-cells against TP53-mutated AML cells to such an extent that there was no therapeutic difference compared to that of non-mutated AML cells.
“This proof-of-principle study shows that concurrent pharmacological therapies and genetically engineered CAR T-cells are promising strategies to develop more effective and tolerable immunotherapies for patients with TP53-mutant AML”, explains head of clinic Markus Manz in the press release.
