Science 
Many success stories have been mentioned in the international press. For the sum of 235 million Swiss francs, Roche bought the small enterprise Glycart, which had developed a process for dramatically increasing the effectiveness of therapeutic antibodies - a breakthrough in the quest for new cancer medication. In a worldwide licence agreement, Novartis acquired the exclusive global rights to the nicotine vaccine CYT002-NicQb from Cytos Biotechnology AG, another ETH spin-off. Cytos is also developing promising allergy vaccines.
Established corporations have long since entered into cooperation with the ETH and its promotional start-up programme. In October 2006, Alstom (Schweiz) AG and the ETH founded a spin-off company for constructing inspection robots: intelligent tools that observe, grasp, measure, repair and inspect. These are used primarily for turbines, generators and other power station components.
Focus on nanotechnology
Zürich’s ETH spin-offs are active in twenty specialist areas – from agrarian technology to environmental sciences. The emphasis lies on life sciences and nanotechnology. HeiQ Materials AG, for example, operates in this area of the future, manufacturing nano-sized additives from silver, copper and zinc oxide. Worked into synthetic fibres for clothes and in plastics, these additives, known as «frogskins», combat bacteria and fungi as well as providing protection against UV rays. The first areas of application have already been identified: doctors’ white coats, operation masks and other hospital attire, as well as protective layers for all applications liable to bacterial attack: the food industry, hygiene, cosmetics, water preparation, air filters. The nano-particles used by HeiQ in tiny quantities pose no health risks, are easy to process and significantly cheaper than conventional solutions. The company founders struck on the idea while out hiking, when they were bothered by the pungent odour of their sweaty T-shirts.
Source: http://euro.zuerich.com
Spin-offs: From ideas to successful products
Innovation
Zürich is a European centre for technology transfer, a place where ideas become marketable products. This process is ensured by a strong network consisting of universities, the private sector and the state. Thanks to and with the assistance of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, one of the world’s leading technical universities, at least 170 high-tech companies have been established in the past ten years.