Northern Europe says Skol To Biotechnology

Courtesy of BioCon Valley In the Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League, a free-trade alliance between cities situated along the shores of the Baltic Sea, built a major commercial center that enriched the participants. Today, the region's life sciences leaders have formed the ScanBalt organization with the same aims. Officially launched in 2002, ScanBalt encompasses the EU member states Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Germany; the EU candidate countries Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland; and Norway, Iceland, and Northwest Russia. The countries to the west of the Baltic Sea are home to some of the most successful biotech clusters in Europe, with sophisticated laboratory facilities and an extensive community of biotech companies. The countries to the east offer a cheap infrastructure, a highly educated workforce, and a relatively positive public attitude towards biotechnology. Sixty-three universities and more than 700 biotech-related companies are based in the Baltic Sea region. ScanBalt also incorporates two well-known Northern European biotechnology clusters, Medicon Valley in southern Sweden and Denmark, and BioCon Valley in northern Germany, with a combined healthcare/biotech workforce of 135,700. "We want to build a community here in this area," says Børge Diderichsen, vice president of the Danish company, Novo Nordisk, and vice chairman of ScanBalt. "You have almost 100 million people [living here], and the countries are already connected by many cultural and historical and also modern political ties." STUDENTS ACROSS THE SEA One of ScanBalt's principle aims is to increase the exchange and mobility of students and researchers in the region. Niels Fuglede of the ScanBalt secretariat takes measures to avoid brain drain, particularly from the east to the west of the Baltic. "Right now, it is just a matter of creating contacts between researchers and teachers," explains Fuglede, "That way it will also influence student mobility." Indeed, the key to the healthy circulation of ideas, not only among students, but also in the workforce, is building competitive environments that will attract people. "If we succeed in developing good networks within the ScanBalt bioregion, the problem of migration will solve itself," notes Vadim Vasilyev at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg. Vasilyev has begun to build such a network among scientists involved in stem cell re-search by meeting with Danish scientists at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. In Russia, legislation on embryonic stem cell technology is more flexible than in most other European countries. Denmark, for example, has difficulties in accepting the applications of stem cell technology if the cells are derived from embryos. Vasilyev envisions that "scientists from the countries where legislation is less flexible and reasonable than in Russia ... will cooperate with their colleagues from states [where legislation is more flexible] and will carry out joint collaborative research." He adds, "We are mostly interested in embryonic stem cells; they are interested in somatic stem cells." Vasilyev believes that the benefit from collaborating with scientists from other ScanBalt member countries will be multilateral, noting that scientists in Russia receive a very profound training and that the same holds true for the Baltic countries and Poland. "These people could contribute a lot to collaborative biotechnological projects," he says. Russian scientists will gain access to the sophisticated laboratory equipment of their colleagues in Scandinavia or northern Germany, equipment that Russian research institutes often still cannot afford to buy. Institutes and companies will also benefit from the less-developed economies in the former Soviet Union. "Salary costs are a significant factor in the biotechnology industry," stresses Jaanus Pikani of the Estonian Genome Foundation. He says that the cost of living in Estonia is lower than that in countries west of the Baltic, which brings down the cost of labor, without a related decline in living standards. "We look forward to different ways of cooperation and invite companies to set up facilities in our country." GENOMIC GEOGRAPHY Estonia made the news last year with the launch of a national gene bank, the Estonian Genome Project.1 Pikani believes that other gene banks in the ScanBalt area could learn from the Estonian approach: "Research is quite flexible, but at the same time, the data security issues have been solved on the highest level," he adds. "We have a special law that regulates the requirements for data security; it also regulates how data should be collected and how the data could be used." ScanBalt: Member CountriesClick for larger version (67K) To boost creation of pharmacogenomic therapies and diagnostics, the Estonian government gave the fledgling biotechnology company EGeen exclusive access to its comprehensive stores of genetic material and family histories. "All the gene banks [in the Scanbalt alliance] can learn a lot from [the Estonian] structure ...," says Bo Samuelsson, ScanBalt chairman. Pikani and Werner Christie of the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board are now studying potential collaborations among scientists involved in gene bank projects in the Baltic Sea region. Iceland was the first country in the world to set up a national gene bank. Latvia has plans to follow Estonia's more recent example. Meanwhile, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland are involved in a large EU-wide study of twins. Pikani says these projects could benefit from each other if data were collected in a more harmonized way. "Then you could pool some of the data and analyze them together, especially when you study common diseases," Pikani asserts. "The actual associations are not very strong, and you need much bigger data sets." Meanwhile, some scientists in the Baltic Sea region are looking at marine organisms as a source of new molecules for the development of medical or industrial products, such as new antibiotics or environmentally friendly antifouling agents. They are now mapping the activities in the region to see whether they can join forces in applying for EU funds. Pharmacologist Ulrike Lindequist at the University of Greifswald in Germany is coordinating the project. Her dream is to establish a Baltic drug development center. "We would like to bundle research into novel bioactive substances, because we don't want to get stuck at the search stage; we would like to bring new products to the market," he adds. "We think that the first stages of development could be done in the respective countries, but the later stages of drug development could then all happen at this center. Eventually, we would want to sell the respective compound to a bigger pharmaceutical company." One ScanBalt research project has already attracted its own funding from the Nordic Industrial Fund. The project is aimed at establishing a knowledge center for intellectual property (IP) management, especially aimed at the biotech industry. Scientists at the Center for Intellectual Property Studies at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, are conducting a pilot study to explore the supply and demand of IP knowledge in the region. They also are developing a business plan for the actual implementation of a knowledge center that could provide training and assistance in IP management. ScanBalt project manager Peter Frank says scientists are coming up with new ideas for collaborative research projects nearly every day. "That illustrates quite well how ScanBalt works: It is very much a bottom-up approach," he explains. "If we succeed, it means the creation of new job opportunities and prosperity not least in the Baltic Sea states Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, together with the northwestern part of Russia. Integration into the EU and the global biotech network are key goals for ScanBalt. This should also help to attract back scientists, who at the moment prefer to work in the United States or elsewhere." Martina Habeck (m.habeck@gmx.net) is a freelance writer in London. 1. T. Hollon, "Gene pool expeditions," The Scientist, 15[4]:1, Feb. 19, 2001. A SCANDINAVIAN BIOTECH TEMPLATE The Medicon Valley may be the only Scandinavian region that can compete with other bioregions in Europe, let alone the United States. The biotech cluster encompasses the Copenhagen area in Denmark and the Skåne region in southern Sweden and has a population of nearly 3 million people. The area hosts 60% to 65% of the Scandinavian pharmaceutical and medical technology industries and has 11 universities, including Lund University, which is the largest and one of the oldest universities in Scandinavia. Medicon Valley hosted nine new biotech startups in 2002, despite the downturn in the economy, and reports a 13% increase in new jobs at life science companies since the September 11, 2001, tragedy.1 Thirty-four thousand people work in health-related fields, including 95 biotechs, 125 medical technology companies, and 71 pharmaceutical companies.2 Copenhagen Biotech Assets, which works with protein folding to create remedies to diseases like Alzheimer, was founded in March 2002. The Swedish company UriPlug was created in collaboration with researchers at Lund University, and holds a patent that could lead to creation of a treatment for incontinence. Until last year, scientists and business leaders had established one biotech company each month, says Børge Diderichsen, vice president of the Danish company, Novo Nordisk, and vice chairman of ScanBalt. The pace of new development has slowed, but not stopped. The region also has seen a considerable influx of venture capital. "Right now, we are in an investment valley, like many other places," he adds. "But [we] have been less hard hit than other areas by the temporary slowdown in biotech activities." References 1. Medicon Valley Academy, Annual Report 2002; available online at www.mva.org/media(9,1033)/MVA_Annual_Report_2002.pdf 2. W. Blank, H. Cuypers, "Opportunities in the Baltic Sea area through borderless biotech," presentation at the Biotechnology Industry Organization annual meeting, June 25, 2003. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } Skol To Biotechnology"> .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

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