On November 4th, 2026, BIO-RED held its first Cross-Regional Showcase, “Ideas Without Borders”, an online event bringing together innovators, investors, and ecosystem stakeholders from across Europe to explore how cross-regional collaboration can turn ideas into opportunities. As a BIO-RED partner, AccelBio supported the event alongside the other partners from the project’s seven regions.

The showcase was organised together with BIO-RED’s sister project, HELIX, a health data ecosystem. After a welcome from BIO-RED Project Manager Beatriz Pereira, the programme presented BIO-RED and the opportunities it offers to participating teams, followed by an introduction to the HELIX platform, its collaboration opportunities, and its upcoming funding call, presented by HELIX Project Manager Anabela Veiga.

The “Hackathon Stories” session gave the floor to innovators who took part in the BIO-RED inter-regional hackathons. Rui Carvalho Santos from Portugal, Saulius Fomenko from Lithuania, and Krasimira Rusinova-Ilieva from Bulgaria shared how they found new teammates, tested their solutions in new ecosystems, and turned a local idea into a cross-regional story. The session was moderated by Kristina Eskenazi (HLSC, Bulgaria) and Simona Šimulytė (LithuaniaBio).

The event closed with the Solution Testing & Readiness Firetalk, an open conversation with international investors on what it takes to move a therapeutic, diagnostic, or advanced therapy from the lab to proof of concept: generating robust preclinical and clinical evidence, navigating regulatory pathways, and building the data package that convinces life-science investors to commit. The speakers were Christian Kumar of Med Tech Makers Lab (UK) and Dr. Georgios Varsos of VU Venture Partners (USA), and the session was moderated by Stamatiki Kritas of the Hellenic Biocluster (HBio).

The showcase reflected the idea behind the whole BIO-RED journey: hack locally, grow across Europe. You can find out more about the project and its Open Innovation Platform at bio-red.eu.