Biotech Initiatives: A Global Competition

Publisher's Note: While more than 40 states are working to encourage the creation and growth of biotechnology companies, as we have said over the years, the U.S. is competing in a global economy. This is just as true in technology as in textiles. The fact that the recently concluded BIO annual conference was held in Toronto only underscores the point. Over the years, the SSTI Weekly Digest has featured selected international initiatives as a gentle reminder to policymakers that the U.S. is not alone in this effort. Below, we feature two European efforts focused on biotechnology.

Biosaxony

Biosaxony is a geographic region that is becoming a gateway for biotech development throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada. The German state of Saxony invested more than $450 million over a period of five years to develop a high concentration of R&D companies who are partnering with academia to pioneer advances in biotechnology. Germany itself boasts 360 biotech and health technology companies, up from 279 just two years ago.

The British owned DNA engineering company Gene Bridges recently moved its headquarters to Biosaxony to take advantage of the area's concentration of biotech expertise. Similarly, the Canada owned genomics company Cenix BioScience was recently located to the region for the same reason. U.S. companies also are eyeing Biosaxony, due to the low-cost facilities and access to experts in fields such as bioinformatics, tissue engineering and drug discovery.

The main focus of Germany's multi-million dollar initiative lies in the subsidized establishment of regional biotech centers in Leipzig and Dresden. "Biocity Leipzig," for example, is concentrating heavily on research in the field of environmental biotechnology and biomedicine and, at the same time, is establishing an incubator for start-up companies. Although the site is not yet finished, many companies have already begun securing long-term leases.

ScanBalt Initiative

Meanwhile, biotechnology leaders in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Latvia, St. Petersburg and Sweden have launched the ScanBalt Initiative to foster greater cooperation in attracting and supporting biotechnology research and development in the region.

The ScanBalt Initiative follows major investment by the European Union in the biotechnology industry in Scandinavia and the Baltic States and is one of several high profile economic partnerships among EU member states and potential members that have arisen in conjunction with the EU's proposed next wave of expansion. ScanBalt's mission will be to promote knowledge formation, education and research within biotech and life sciences and to shape a competitive life sciences/biotech-industrial region for ScanBalt inhabitants.