Miomir Knezevic
Head of the Unit for Collection and Processing of Haematopoietic Stem Cells, Blood Transfusion Centre of Slovenia
Miomir Knezevic was born August 3, 1958 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He began his career as a  secondary school teacher and continued as a researcher and CEO in small biotechnology companies in Slovenia and Austria. Miomir is a biologist and got his PhD in biotechnology at the University Ljubljana in 1994. He specialised in biotechnology, especially animal cell technology, cell therapies and tissue engineering at the Institute of Applied Microbiology in Vienna. Besides his professional interests he has a lot of practical experience in SME founding and management. During his more than 20-year professional career he worked on different institutes in Slovenia, Austria and Belgium. He is a cofounder of several biotech companies, with participation of Venture capital. Miomir is habilitated as an Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana. He also worked as the Slovenian expert on detachment in the European Commission Unit for Applied Genomics and Biotechnology for Health in directorate Health, DG Research in Brussels. Currently he is Head of  the Unit for Collection and Processing of Haematopoietic Stem Cells at the Blood Transfusion Centre of Slovenia in Ljubljana and collaborates with the National Institute of Biology as an advisor for business development.

Commercialisation of Stem Cell Research
Word commercialisation has a problematic conotation when used for ethicaly sensitive products. Stem cells are definitively among them:Exploitation of stem cell research would give broader view on this topic, including IP and founding of new innovative companies. Stem cells research is opening up new and exciting medical frontiers with huge implications for drug development. Regarding the exploitation of results of the stem cell research, many of the collaborations in this area with industry involve small, dedicated companies rather than large pharma or biotech companies. Small companies are playing a key role because of their flexibility. A number of start-up companies have been created as ‘spin-offs’ from academia in the field but there is still a big gap which has to be filled. Patenting is the main issue in exploitation process which could attract investors with its huge potential profits. On one hand, industry has to secure high investments to support innovative R&D but on the other academia should have more open hands regarding access to new cell lines. Old ones seems not to be good enough. New technologies e.g. systems biology are opening new frontiers and open rising new questions as well.