AAX Biotech Wins Pitch Competition, Glue4Life takes home Innovation Poster Exhibition at NLSdays

Daniel X Johansson, CEO and cofounder at AAX Biotech accepting the Nordic Star Pitch Competition prize onstage during NLSDays 2026.

Swedish company AAX Biotech impressed the jury at Nordic Life Science Days and took home the Nordic Star prize at the premier Nordic Life Science partnering conference, while Finnish company Glue4Life was voted as the best Innovation Poster.

Nordic Life Science Days attracts the best innovators and actors across the Nordics to do business and to showcase and celebrate Nordic ingenuity. This year’s event in Stockholm, which drew a wide range of exhibitors and international delegations, saw 14 pre-selected startups compete in the Nordic Star Pitch competition while 22 academics and startups showcased their ideas in the Innovation Poster Exhibition.

AAX Biotech wins Nordic Star Pitch Competition

The Swedish company AAX Biotech was selected by the jury as the winner of the NLSDays Nordic Star 2026 Award, consisting of a 10,000 EUR cash prize and two tickets to next year’s event. AAX Biotech is a research-driven biotech company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden with proprietary technologies that solve unmet needs in the development of next-generation antibody therapeutics.

Daniel X Johansson, CEO and cofounder at AAX Biotech accepted the prize onstage. “It’s an absolute honour. The competition was tough; I watched the other companies and many of them had excellent pitches. We are a young company so this exposure is important for us and valuable as it can help us to be seen by more investors and potential collaborators”.

The jury’s motivation for the winning company reads: A company representing a highly sophisticated and high impact solution with a very clear business case. The company’s innovation is especially impressive as it truly stands out in an otherwise competitive space that is heavily explored historically and coming up with a disruptive technology in that space is why AAX Biotech is awarded this year’s prize”.

The Nordic Star pitch competition was sponsored by HSBC Innovation Banking.The pitch competition jury consisted of Yun Yang, Investment Associate, Hadean Ventures, Carl Kilander, Partner, HealthCap, Jón Bergsteinsson, Founder and MP, LIFA.VC, Pekka Simula, Partner, Innovestor, Emmanuel Nony, Director of External Innovation Europe, Servier and Marjo Puumalainen, International Director at SwedenBIO and Program Director NLSDays.

Glue4Life CEO Laura Kuittinen recieving the prize for Innovation Poster Exhibition at NLSDays 2026.

Glue4Life wins Innovation Poster Exhibition

To celebrate and offer visibility to early innovators from the Nordics, NLSDays welcomes academic researchers and SME:s to showcase their ideas with commercial potential in the form of posters. 22 innovators were selected to showcase in this year’s Innovation Poster Exhibition.The winning exhibitor, Glue4Life, a spin-off company from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology at Tampere University, Finland, is developing a next-generation hydrogel platform. The startup says it aims to shift the paradigm of 3D bioprinting by simplifying the printing process and improving maturation and functionality of printed tissues.

Laura Kuittinen, CEO of Glue4Life accepted the prize on stage: “Im super excited about the win. This opens doors in the Nordics, but also in Europe and the world and I really hope to be back again next year with a new idea”.