Berlin starting to catch up

After years of lagging behind other domestic and international research hubs, the Berlin area is bolstering its biotech sector in the hope that it can one day match the strength of life science giants the United States and the United Kingdom.Last week (November 15), BioTOP Berlin-Brandenburg, a government-sponsored organization promoting the region as a biotech center, held its annual "balance sheet" to tout the previous year's successes.After the meeting, Kai Uwe Bindseil, director of BioTOP, told The Scientist that Berlin still has a long way to grow before reaching the level of centers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, he said, Berlin has made great progress in the past few years and is now near the level Munich and the areas of Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Darmstadt. "But it is not so important for us now which nose in this race is in first place," Bindseil said. "What is important is that we [Berlin] continue to develop as a biotech center."That development includes venture capital investment in biotech totaling €90 million [USD $118.6 million] in 2004, Bindseil said. "We are not at the level of the US and UK. But it [€90 million] is double the investment we had in 2003."Speakers at BioTOP's "balance sheet" event included Detlev Ganten, head of Charité University Medical Center Berlin, Günter Stock, of Schering AG's executive board, and Martin Vingron, director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.In June, Vingron had told The Scientist that he would use part of his €750,000 (USD $988,000) cash award from the Max Planck Research Prize for International Cooperation to help turn Berlin into a "center of intellectual creativity" in bioinformatics, with a focus on regulatory genomics and network analysis.After last week's meeting, Vingron said it was not realistic to expect Berlin's biotech capabilities to match those in the United States and the United Kingdom anytime soon. "Harvard and MIT, the Bay Area, Cambridge [in the UK] are not standing still," he said. "They also are moving forward. But we need to have goals in life. It is good that Berlin has this goal to build up its biotech sector. You need to be optimistic, yet realistic. It would be hard to pull off what Harvard and MIT are pulling off."Vingron said that in order to even come close to fulfilling its biotech aspirations, Berlin needs help from the government. "Germany makes life pretty hard for biotech and research," he said.Specifically, Vingron cited Germany's stem cell laws, which ban production of human embryonic stem cells for research and limit imports to cell lines that date before January 1, 2002; and a new law expected to win final parliamentary soon that strictly regulates genetically modified (GM) crops.BioTOP is financed with about €1 million (USD $1.32 million) a year by the city-state of Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg, according to BioTOP spokeswoman Christina Puhan. Additional support comes from Berlin-based firm Schering AG.Puhan said Berlin should be particularly attractive to foreign scientists. In addition to cultural and entertainment attractions, it also boasts one of the highest concentrations of biotech scientists in Germany, she said. The Berlin area is home to five universities, three technical universities, seven biotech research parks, more than 160 biotech firms, and more than 20 research institutes, including those of the Max Planck Society, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine.But Bindseil, BioTOP's chief, said that in order to attract more foreign scientists, use of English in universities and research institutes would have to become more widespread. "The international language of science is English," he said. "It is very important to start using more English in the classes, so that international scientists who come to Berlin can lecture in English."

Berlin starting to catch up

An initiative to bolster the city's biotech industry is beginning to pay dividends

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