Success for some is the measure of wealth they have accumulated, while for some it is the respect they have earned. The word holds different meaning for different people. For Emmanuel Vincent, the Co-founder and CEO of Aenitis Technologies, it is the measure of how many lives he has saved or improved. Although, together we can move mountains but the strong determination and perseverance of one person can also make a difference in this world and that is what this 41-year young healthcare leader is set to do.
Emmanuel is driven by activities involving social impact and is value creation oriented. The love for life-long learning and wonders of science is what motivated him to take up a career in the disruptive healthcare technologies development industry. Wanting to make highly extensive revolutionary healthcare solutions, specifically cell processing solutions, affordable for the masses, he co-founded Aenitis, a start-up developing enabling technologies for cell therapy downstream processing issues.
About Emmanuel
Emmanuel has an extensively rich academic background with a Master’s degree of Biology between Nantes University (France) and Sussex University (UK); Specialized Master’s degree on Biotech Organization Management at Grenoble Management School; and Double Executive MBA with University of Quebec in Montreal (Canada) and Paris Dauphine University (France) with a Minor in China. With an extraordinary prowess in both healthcare and entrepreneurship, Emmanuel has been a catalyst of growth for several industries, working in various capacities.
In 2005, Emmanuel worked as a marketing assistant in Axcan Pharma, Canada, after which he went to work for University of Quebec in Montreal Business School as a searcher. Further, he worked as a project manager in the Paris Region Biotech Healthcare Cluster’s Association from 2010 to 2011. Emmanuel, then, worked as consultant and business development for Cambridge IP in Business Intelligence and for Bioclustar in clustering intelligence, and start-up coaching. Adding to this intensive experience, he also headed the biotech and healthcare activities in the biggest French start-up incubator: Agoranov. In 2014, with two high levels CNRS and ESPCI searchers he founded Aenitis Technologies. Since then, Emmanuel has been leading Aenitis Technology towards greater heights of success as its CEO.
An Empowering Spearhead
“Leading a deep-tech start-up in medical technologies is clearly like leading a human adventure, meaning dealing with stress, conflict, emotions at large. Adaptability and more largely multitasking ability are important too, as in a start-up you never have as much support functions or colleagues as in big companies,” says Emmanuel. “Decision making is based on common sense and a good decision-maker is someone with some experience acquired by years and acquired by proxy by associating with great leaders”, he adds further.
According to Emmanuel, empathy and openness to opportunities are important traits in a leader. Abilities to go in any territories, speaking with anyone, a specialist or an expert and more general interlocutors is essential, especially in healthcare where there are double competences – science and business. Apart from this, specific knowledge on start-up and open innovation is also very useful, believes Emmanuel. “If you help others to achieve their goals, you will become a part of the success equation,” he advices.
Inspiration of the Inspiring Leader
In his life, Emmanuel has faced numerous challenges and hurdles, all of which he has conquered gracefully. Through this journey of highs and lows, certain people have been his source of inspiration, never failing to guide him towards betterment. His professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Prof. Robert H. Desmarteau, gave him the logical subtleties on the impact of business models in healthcare high tech industries. Another one of his professors at the same university, Prof. Michel Langlois, was his inspiration on Experiential Marketing. Emmanuel has always looked up to the great leader, Nelson Mandela, inspired by his wisdom and vision of winning humanity driven and socially impactful bets. He has also admired the leadership strength of Zinedine Zidane, the famous football player, that was based on excellence, talent, and above all, humbleness and simplicity.
Aenitis – The Changing Face of Healthcare
Aenitis Technologies develops innovative multi-patented devices for continuous, contactless, and pressureless manipulation of cells in suspensions by using acoustic radiation forces. The technology is based on acoustophoresis principle, which uses acoustic radiation forces to induce transportation in cell suspensions in order to perform soft handling of cells. This approach permits to reduce cells processing cost, cells processing and handling issues, and cells processing yields. Currently, Aenitis develops devices for blood processing, for diabetes cell therapies processing, for stem cell handling, and for oncology cell therapy processing boost.
Aenitis is focused on development and sales of disruptive medical devices for cell therapy downstream processing issues. “Today, the next therapeutic generation are cell therapies’ approaches, such as CAR-T in Oncology and many others. Thus,the major development of those therapies is through the abilities of processing cells. By improving cells processing devices, we improve the abilities of cell therapy development and cost-accessibleness to patients. This is a key impact in healthcare worldwide.” asserts Emmanuel.
Looking ahead, Aenitis aims to be the world leader in acoustophoresis-based medical devices technologies.
Reverence and Recognitions
For its incredible contribution in cells processing and cell therapies development, Aenitis has been honored with most of the best awards in Europe, this includes French Ministry of Reseach Award, European SME Instrument Award, Innovation Challenge Award. The company received over €7M grants since its incorporation nearly 5 years ago.
Viewpoint on Global Care Scenario
Shedding light on what the industry looks like today and where it is heading, Emmanuel said, “Cell therapies will receive more and more regulatory approvals. This new paradigm will have a huge impact on Pharma companies’ business model as cell processing should be done closer to the patient, ideally in the hospital itself in a GMP or GMP like cell therapy unit.” He further adds, “It will have a big impact on regulatory aspects. Today, in medical devices, notified bodies are not comfortable and most regulatory entities in the lead countries should work more closely with start-up than only big pharma to well proportionate and adapt regulation instead of generating too strong barriers that will have deep impacts on cell therapies’ costs, so on patients access to these therapies.”