Made in Italy: Biotech surge ranks Lombardy among top clusters
The charm and the challenge of Italy is keeping up with change. Even as you admire the venerable Duomo or da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper, you step outside to discover the world’s greatest concentration of cutting edge fashion designers.
Unless you have recently revisited your views of biotechnology in Italy, there is a risk that you, and not Italian biotech, are out of date.
Over the past seven years Italy’s position in this competitive sector has surged dramatically.
A network of innovative companies, new science parks and published research has sprung up with the greatest concentration in the Lombardy region.
In his opening comments welcoming BIO-Europe Spring® to Milan on March 16, Roberto Gradnick, the President of Assobiotech, said that the region today boasts over 200 projects advancing through different stages of development, and an increasing specialization is emerging among Italian researchers in the field of rare diseases.
During a session focused on biotech in Italy, Massimo Boriero, President of the Biotechnologies Group, Farmindustria, said there are 230 pharma specialty companies that call Italy home and collectively they have pushed exports up by 53 percent since 2000 and an impressive 196 percent since 1996.
With over 70,000 employees working in the sector, Italy today ranks as the third largest country in Europe and the fifth-ranked in the world for employment in life sciences.
Meanwhile Massimo Buscemi, Minister with the Lombardy Region and the former head of Assobiotech, said growth in biotech has delivered a 33.7 percent increase in the number of clinical studies underway in the region, of which 42.6 percent are in Phase I and II.
“The capacity to continue this kind of growth and the support of biotech is demonstrated by the bold and solid progress over the past seven years,” he said, adding that Lombardy’s leading position is strongly supported by the Italian Minister for Research who is actively pursuing a policy of connecting private and public sectors to advance projects and further growth.
Two highlights of a special focus on Italian Biotech during BIO-Europe Spring 2009 included:
* The presentation of the Technology Foresight study recently completed by Fondazione Rosselli. With a ten year horizon and objective to provide a roadmap for allocating public resources to support development, the study identified emerging technologies in the Milan and Lombardy regions for biotechnology, advanced materials, ICT and nanotechnology, assessing their potential to provide a relevant contribution to the development of advanced applications for diagnosis and treatment.
* A workshop entitled “Innovation Made in Italy” showcasing state-of-the-art technologies with examples of industrially applicable results from Italian research as well as companies active in highlighted areas of expertise within the Milan Biocluster.
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