The number of foreign investors participating in Catalan biotech companies has gone from 0 to 50, and over the past five years alone, the figure has increased tenfold, according to the latest Biocat report.

A preview of the emerging health care companies profiled in the current issue of Start-Up. This month's profile group, "The Drug Delivery Road Gets Tougher," features profiles of ActoGeniX, Atacama Labs, Glide Pharma and Mimetic Solutions. Plus these Start-Ups Across Health Care: Light Dimensions, Relyspa, Stentys and Thrombotargets.

Company executives at Thrombotargets hit the ground running upon its 2005 founding in Barcelona, Spain. In two years, they have developed a pipeline of 11 hemostatics, anticoagulants, antiplatelets and fibrinolytics, all enabled by the company's proprietary high-throughput screening process, BioPlatformScreen. Thrombotargets is now preparing for clinical trials of its lead candidate, an antihemorrhagic human recombinant protein that has received FDA orphan drug status for two indications.