Hanseatic hospitality kicks off Europe’s biggest partnering event
A magnificent setting and an impressive turnout of over 1,000 delegates made for an exciting evening of networking, presentations and casual conversation to kick off BIO-Europe 2007 Sunday evening at Hamburg’s elegant Rathaus (Town Hall).
Political and industry dignitaries representing Life Science Nord welcomed BIO-Europe participants from 40 countries to the festivities.
Dr. Kathrin Adlkoffer, Managing Director for Hamburg’s life science development group Norgenta, welcomed the delegates as host for the reception.
Other prominent executives speaking to the group were Jörg Dräger, Minister for Science and Research of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Jörn Aldag, CEO Evotec AG and Dietrick Austermann, the State Secretary for the Ministry of Science, Economics and Transport of Schleswig-Holstein.
Minster Austermann announced that a new Fraunhofer-Institute for Marine and Medical Biotechnology is being established in nearby Lübeck. Work has already begun, he said, on problems of regenerative medicine and the development of a stem cell bank in that location.
By 2013, this Fraunhofer Institute will be fully developed and engaged in research in close cooperation with regional institutions and other enterprises, he said.
Mr. Aldag from Evotec said Hamburg is on its way to becoming a leading hub of Europe’s academic drug discovery with the creation of European ScreeningPort GmbH, a company that will run a state-of-the-art drug discovery service centre.
Initiated by Evotec and implemented by Norgenta GmbH, European ScreeningPort provides the missing link in Europe between academic research and the pharmaceutical industry, said Aldag.
More than € 7 million in preliminary financing has been raised for the project by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and Evotec AG. Funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research will total more than € 800 million by 2011.
Acting as a service provider the research centre will accelerate drug discovery by offering standardised, efficient and cost-effective development processes that have, until now, been available only to industry to new therapeutic concepts developed at universities.
Run as a public private partnership European ScreeningPort will greatly enhance the search for promising new compounds by validating and translating promising results generated in basic research for subsequent developement by pharmaceutical and biotech companies, who for their part, can benefit from the research results generated at ScreeningPort to complement their own drug research.
A number of European research institutes have already been linked tied into the initiative. Among others, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and the Vienna-based Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have signed letters of intent. Another partner with a keen interest is c.a.r.u.s. IT AG, a company specialisspecializinged in high-performance data management solutions for life sciences.
Dr Kathrin Adlkofer, Managing Director of the North German Life Science Agency Norgenta, said, “Our main objective is to bring together the region’s existing excellence in science and business. ScreeningPort will see a unique network of partners in academia and industry who will mutually be able to benefit from pooling their expertise in medical science, technological know-how and industrial performance.”
‘Changing World of Biotech-Pharma’ highlights busy Monday conference program
Minister Dräger addresses the opening plenary session of BIO-Europe today, to be joined on the podium by Carola Schropp, James C. Greenwood, President & CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and Emmanuel Chantelot, Executive Director of the European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises (EBE).
In the following plenary debate Vaughn M. Kailian, General Partner, MPM Capital will lead a discussion on “The Changing World Order of Biotech-Pharma,” with Dr. Jan Lundberg, Executive VP for Discovery Research at AstraZeneca, Dr. John Maraganore the CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, and Barbara Yanni, VP and Chief Licensing Officer for Merck & Co.
Delegates will have a morning workout with six interactive workshops lined up ahead of the plenary session. The afternoon program offers four tracks on for Pharma, for Business Development, a series called “In The Spotlight,” and a series of International Seminars.
Lucky 13 for BIO-Europe
Attendance at this year’s BIO-Europe, the 13th annual international partnering conference, grew by 17% over last year’s meeting in Düsseldorf. Delegates drawn from 4- countries scheduled 8,500 face-to-face meetings.
“This is collaboration and partnering on an impressive scale,” said Carola Schropp with organizer EBD.
“The priority for everyone here is sitting down with potential partners to discuss projects for licensing, molecules, financing and other collaborative programs,” she said, adding, “This is the key to the success we are seeing today.”
Schropp said 2,400 projects for partnering were posted to the BIO-Europe conference software system in the weeks leading up to the event.
In addition to the face-to-face meetings, she said over 200 companies scheduled formal presentations of their proposals for new business opportunities over the three day event.
Company presentations are listed in the conference agenda.
BIO-Europe 2007 began with a pre-conference workshop on Friday that attracted some 100 participants.
The BIO Advanced Business Development Course 2007 offered a hands-on, practical course built around a real world business case for collaborative sharpening of skills and knowledge for valuation, due diligence, intellectual property as well as negotiation and influence strategies.
The intensive three-day session was designed exclusively for life science business development professionals by EBD in collaboration with the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
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