«What the Mithra’s story has told us and still teaches us everyday: this is in the positive confrontation of bright minds and talents with high
level expertise and pertinent know-how from research and real world, from the thinking and the reality that the best projects are designed,
the best ideas are materialized, the most beautiful pages of a story are written.
Should there be a truth we can prove daily, this is this one.
Mithra was born from the meeting of two individuals belonging to two distant universes who discovered their ignored complementarities.
When we created in 1999 the spin-of «Mithra Pharmaceuticals», Professor J-M Foidart and myself never could imagine at that time what a
great destiny this company would have. What we knew however from the start is we had nothing to lose by sharing our expertise. Our encoun-
ter has given both of us the wings to go further together in our own professional desire.
Mithra is a story of synergies born between two diferent worlds : the academic and the wrongly called «private sector» used to describe the
world of enterprise as if there were on one side the mind and on the other one the hands...
Living this event in Liège, in a geographical location with a large number of attractive features was our great opportunity. Today, Liège and its
surrounding can be given as an example of a welcoming land for cutting-edge scientifc and biotech projects. It is even referred to as a BioTech
Valley, like across the ocean the famous Silicon Valley.
One only creates happily in a positive environment; rarely in adversity; never under the bombs! The University, the city, the region were our
cocoon. We have found here the positive energy that led us at the point where we are today and will bring us further tomorrow.
The GIGA ofers a welcoming land that is identical, fertile, exceptionally rich in hosting research projects at the cutting edge between tech-
nologies, that will shape our future practice and projects requiring high innovation and high level of expertise in diferent areas. In ofering this
incredible opportunity for «unlikely encounters» to quote the words of its founders that boosts the spirits and creates a genuine environment,
fertile and productive, the GIGA has become an eminently suitable place for creation and creativity for a lot of young researchers, for medium
and small companies and for innovative startups to prepare within its premises what will be our world tomorrow».
François Fornieri
CEO-Founder of Mithra Pharmaceuticals