Abbott, BASF to join Roche and Merck Serono in biotechnology cluster Rhine-Neckar
Three big pharma companies, three renowned research institutions and 60 small and medium-sized biotech enterprises have joined together for focused research programs on advance diagnostics and stem cells.
The German federal government will invest EUR 40 million in research funding for the programs, having selected the Biotechnology Cluster Rhine-Neckar from among 38 competing proposals for a single, winner-takes-all award.
The BioRN Cluster Management GmbH (BioRN) has now been formed to organize the 100 partner organizations and sharply define the 50 projects put forward for development in the two focus areas.
At a press conference on the opening day of BIO-Europe 2008, the Managing Director for the BioRN organization, Christian Tidona, confirmed that Abbott Deutchland had expressed a strong interest in joining the two original program partners, Merck Serono and Roche Diagnostics.
Also speaking at the press event was Hans Kast, President and Chief Executive Officer, BASF Plant Science, who said that his company will also be joining the program.
BioRN has set ambitious goals, aiming to develop a total of 70 new drugs, diagnostic products and technology platforms, as well as about 20 innovative services in the field of cell-based and molecular medicine by the year 2013.
“Our key strategy here is partnering,” said Jürgen Schwiezer, Chief Executive Officer of the Diagnostics Division of Roche.
“We already generate more than half our total sales from products developed with the aid of biotechnologies. To do this we cooperate closely with research institutions and biotech companies both large and small here in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region.”
“I have to admit that 95% of innovation is not coming from big companies but from the smaller ones, so we are used to working with smaller companies and institutions as part of our daily work now,” he added.
Bernhard Kirschbaum, Head of Global R&D for Merck Serono, said BioRN will help his company expand its existing programs in the region and that he was both surprised and pleased that the German government had the courage to make a single award rather than trying to spread the research funding among all 16 states as it has done in the past.
He also said he was excited for the stem cell research program which has attracted Prof. Andreas Trumpp, Head of the Genetics and Stem Cell Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, who will be moving to Heidelberg to continue his work.
“For us, this is very good news,” he said. “This is a new field, a field where we have therapies that attack these cells, but they escape. If we can find where they escape to and can tackle them specifically we really have a chance that patients after a year or two will not go into remission and can be cured.”
Fritz Richter who leads Drug Product Development at Abbott’s facility in Ludwigshafen said the advanced work of the BioRN program will help to return Germany to a prominent role in pharmaceutical development.
Institutions who have joined the program include the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ), the University of Heidelberg, the University Hospital Heidelberg, and the European Laboratory for Molecular Biology (EMBL).
A public-private partnership, BioRN also will work with the Heidelberg Technology Park, the Rhine-Neckar Chamber of Commerce and the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region.
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