Some success for Czech biotech

The growing popularity of the Czech Republic within the biotechnology community has been underlined by the decision of the Swiss-based firm Lonza Biotec to expand its production facilities in the country.Lonza Biotec, a custom manufacturing and process developer, has invested €117 million in the country since1992. The company opened a new production facility in Kourim in Central Bohemia in late June, and now employs 270 people in the region. "We decided to expand because of the highly educated workforce and the low labor costs in this country," Simona Borovickova, spokeswoman for Lonza, told The Scientist. Nearly 20% of the firm's Czech workforce is university educated.But Lonza is not the only foreign company to show an interest in the Czech Republic, which joined the European Union in May. The pharmaceutical group Baxter, for example, is building a new state-of-the-art vaccine production facility close to the Czech capital of Prague.The interest of these companies is a significant boost to the Czech government's efforts to promote the country's biotechnology sector. "Biotechnology is one of the six areas that the government plans to focus on in the future because of our good history in this field," Rene Samek from CzechInvest—a government agency that promotes the Czech Republic abroad—told The Scientist. The Czech government is also helping to establish a biotech cluster that brings together universities, research institutes, and local biotech companies in Brno, the birthplace of Gregor Mendel. A new campus at Brno University of Technology that will focus on research in subjects like molecular genetics, genomics, and genetic engineering is also to be opened in 2006.Furthermore, the government has poured money into strengthening the research capacities of the country's 29 universities—traditionally the poor cousins of the Czech Academy of Sciences, whose 59 research institutes include 21 life-science–related institutes.However, Czech scientists believe much more still needs to be done if biotechnology is to thrive in the country.Jiri Hejnar, department head at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, said that it would take another 10 years before Czech research in biotechnology would reach the levels of other countries in the European Union of comparable size, such as Austria and Denmark. "We have some excellent scientists working in biotechnology," Hejnar told The Scientist. "Just look at Dr. Antonin Holy, who developed an antiviral drug for the suppression of AIDS. All the same, biotechnology as whole remains weak. We have a long tradition of basic research, but our budget is low and our biotech industry underdeveloped."Hejnar identified the failure of universities and research institutes to retain postdoc students as the biggest problem. "Most students go abroad as soon as they have finished their PhDs, and very few return, partly because of the low wages. We would like to have many more postdocs in our institute," he said.Hejnar also criticized the government's level of spending on science. "We appreciate the increases in funding that have taken place since the 1990s, but it is still not enough," Hejnar said.In 2002, government spending on research and development remained low at 0.54% of gross domestic product (GDP)—far short of the government's target of 0.7% of GDP, and less than half of the average spending of western European governments.Funding problems have been exacerbated by the limited success that Czech scientists have had in obtaining funding from the European Union, he said. "We hardly win in strong competition of European teams; we hardly obtain any grants," Hejnar said.In addition, Czech scientists are just beginning to commercially exploit their research. "Our institute encourages people start up private business, and one small company has started selling monoclonal antibodies with great success. But we need to do much more. Government and academic policy needs to change to encourage more collaboration between universities and industry," Hejnar said.In spite of these problems, Hejnar said he was optimistic about the future of Czech biotechnology branch. "More and more people are aware of its importance in our country, and more and more young scientists are starting their careers in this field. So I look to the future with hope," he said.Antonin Holy agreed that he was broadly optimistic about Czech biotech. "But I have heard the government say so often that it will support biotechnology, and I do not trust anyone anymore," he told The Scientist.

Some success for Czech biotech

An educated workforce entices biotech firms, but funding is low and EU money hard to get

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