BioValley Life Sciences Week
By Robert Derham
On October 11, BioValley will kick off its annual international Life Sciences Week http://www.biovalley.com/lifesciencesweeks/. During the two-week event, participants from around the world and within BioValley will attend meetings in France, Germany and Switzerland – all within a driving radius of 60 minutes or less. The events are free or charge and include partnering meetings, and presentations on topics ranging from cutting edge research, intellectual property rights, investor relations and academic developments.
BioValley’s world-renowned status comes from its health care industry. With corporate headquarters for global giants such as Novartis http://www.novartis.com/, Roche http://www.roche.com/home.html, Syngenta http://www.syngenta.com/en/index.aspx, Synthes http://www.synthes.com/html/, Lonza http://www.lonza.com/group/en.html, Straumann http://www.straumann.com/com_index.htm and Actelion http://www.actelion.com/, BioValley has developed into a vibrant hub for life science companies in the world.
Some other global pharmaceutical and life science players in BioValley include Johnson & Johnson http://www.jnj.com/home.htm, Eli Lilly http://www.lilly.com/, Dow http://www.dow.com/, Basilea http://www.basilea.com/en.html, DuPont http://www.dupont.com/, Bayer http://www.bayer.com/, Faust Pharmaceutical http://www.faustpharma.com/, Neuro3D http://www.neuro3d.fr/, Amersham Biosciences http://www.amersham.com/ and Polyphor http://www.polyphor.com/.
To represent BioValley’s strength in the health care sector, almost all of the daily events are tied to current health care issues. In fact, the first day’s events go straight to the heart of health care.
The BioValley University Day on October 11 starts off in Illkirch, France with a presentation about the impact that biotech drugs have on the pharmacoeconomics. It will also focus on therapeutic tools of the future, as well as some famous examples of biotech success stories. Additional topics for the day include:
- Challenges of bioproduction
- The CMO model of production
- Biotech drugs: their impact on pharmacoeconomics
- Big pharma and the pharmacoeconomic constraints
Then on October 14-16, booths at the "Fête de la Science", Place Broglie, in Strasbourg and in Mulhouse, France will show videos dealing with therapeutic innovations. In addition, a poster exhibit, accompanied by experiments and scientific observations will inform the audience about the future of medicine.
A new event to this year’s Life Sciences Week is the MedTech days, in Basel, Switzerland from October 19-20. Over 15 companies will present their global activities, which will be followed by partnering opportunities and a look into the future from a panel of key note speakers from the field of medical technology.
Everyone knows research drives innovation. In the health care sector, r esearch leads to drug discovery leads. However making sure those leads make it through clinical trials and become a marketable drug is where many fail. That is why a big attraction is the BioValley Clinical Research Day at the University of Basel’s Pharmacenter on October 22. This event brings together heads of leading pharmaceutical and biotech enterprises, potent investment managers and market analysts. The talks and presentation are intended to illustrate pathways from research to basic drug discovery to clinical studies.
Each event throughout the duration of the conference is filled with top researchers and key global leaders from the health care sector. When asked exactly how influential BioValley is in the health care sector, Peter Raeber, a Business Development Manager for BaselArea http://www.baselarea.org/intro.html, added, “About 40 percent of the world's pharmaceutical industry is established in BioValley's region.”
“In the greater Basel area alone, approximately 200 start-up companies have been established, many of them as spin-offs from the pharmaceutical industry, or from academic research institutions such as the Biocenter http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/ of the University of Basel http://www.unibas.ch, the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) http://www.fmi.ch/ and the National Center of Competence in Research for Nanotechnology (NCCR) http://www.nanovip.com/directory/Detailed/1365.php,” highlighted Raeber. “This trend is increasing and will create new business opportunities, especially for venture capitalists.”
Raeber continued, “In a radius of 500 kilometers (300 miles), companies can reach 60 million consumers with 50% of the total earnings in Europe. That is a tremendous amount of buying power and has been what has attracted investors and businesses alike.”
However, Beat Glatthaar, a BioValley representative, probably summed up BioValley’s strength the best, “Whenever you have the power of three countries coming together with strong leadership, communication and most importantly innovation, good things are bound to come about. We are already there. Good things have happened, are happening, and will continue to happen in BioValley.”
So what are you doing from October 11 th – 27 th?
BioValley Life Sciences Week http://www.biovalley.com/lifesciencesweeks/
France Meetings
October 11-16
Contact:
Sylvie Debra Association Alsace BioValley
sylvie.debra@alsace-biovalley.com
Swiss Meetings
October 17-21
Contact:
Beat Glatthaar BioValley Basel AG
beat.glatthaar@biovalley.com
German Meetings
October 25-27
BioValley Contacts: Contact:
Manfred Claassens BioValley Deutschland e.V.
m.claassens@biovalley.com
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