Canadian and European Competition

Canada is developing a major biotechnology presence. This past December, Generex Biotechnology Corp., which has developed a proprietary drug-delivery platform to orally administer large molecule drugs, opened its newly expanded manufacturing facility and analytical laboratory in Toronto, Ont. The facility has the capacity to produce up to 100,000 filled and labeled units of the company's RapidMist spray device each month.
        In other news from Canada, the Quebec Biotechnology Innovation Center, an incubator organization, is expanding its capacity from six to ten start-ups at a time in a $1.3 million (Canadian) project. The QBIC and its resident companies use space in the Laval Science and Technology Park. The only one of its kind in Quebec, QBIC offers researcher-entrepreneurs private laboratories, scientific equipment and business mentoring services to facilitate the launch of innovative biotechnology companies. Greater Montreal is already a center of established biotechnology companies.
        There are literally hundreds of members of the Biotechnology Industry Association in the U.K., clustered principally in the Thames Valley not far from London, in Cambridge and in Scotland. The Cambridge companies are often off-shoots of the university. There are a number of academic institutions in the other cluster areas as well, along with financial incentives.
        Xenova Group plc, a company pursuing cancer therapies, located in Slough in the Thames Valley because there were economic incentives at the time, according to spokeswoman Hilary Reid-Evans. The ten-year old company was started by pharmaceutical executives who felt they couldn't get corporate support for what seemed like a promising line of research. "Another plus to our location is access to the City and financial institutions," adds Reid-Evans. "We are a half-day trip for the analysts, who can visit other companies in the area as well."
        If Scotland boasts Dolly the sheep, and the U.S. Genie the pig, the Netherlands weighs in with Herman, the world's first transgenic bull and mascot of Pharming. With the arrival of a core group of biotechnology companies, the Netherlands has begun a US$50 million initiative over the next five years to ramp up the industry with seed capital, venture capital and funding for construction of incubator facilities. Interestingly, the population of the northern Netherlands represents the largest pool of genetically homogenous people in the world, an outstanding resource for research and clinical trials.
        The balance of power in biotechnology is unlikely to change radically any time soon. The big players will continue to be big players. But plenty of less likely localities are doing their best to grow their own biotechnology industries.

European Biotech Mushrooms with Increased Investment

As the world's second largest biotechnology market, Europe is currently experiencing an upsurge in investments by biotech and pharmaceutical companies, fueled by recent interest in life sciences following last year's discovery of the human genome. According to the European Investment Monitor, published by Ernst & Young, the regions attracting the highest number of pharmaceutical investments in the first nine months of 2000 were Switzerland, the Paris Basin, the South East of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, closely followed by Sweden and Scotland.         Companies tracked by Oxford Intelligence attribute the popularity of these regions to a number of factors: proximity to world-class universities and research institutes, a skilled labor pool, the presence of other biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and support from the local region in the form of financial and other incentives.         In the UK's South East, for example, much of the activity in the sector is centered on two key locations: Kent and Oxford. Kent, to the south of London, is home to research institutions such as the University of Kent and Greenwich University, which conduct leading-edge research on a range of biotechnical, biomedical and medical research projects in collaboration with commercial sponsors and London teaching hospitals. Major pharmaceutical investors in the area include Abbott, Glaxo Wellcome, Pfizer, Genzyme and Zeneca. Oxford boasts the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and the Institute of Virology, while companies such as Powderject Pharmaceuticals, Oxford Glycosystems and Oxford BioMedica all have bases in the area.         The Essonne region, particularly the town of Evry, 25 miles (40 km.) south of Paris, is playing an important role in the increasing emergence of the Paris Basin as a biotech center of excellence. The University of Evry-Val d'Essonne offers specialized graduate training programs, a business start-up division and space for production facilities and houses the national sequencing center, national genotyping center and Infobiogen, a national center for applied computer science in the field of microbiology. Essonne offers a skilled labor pool that is in high demand, as demonstrated by the area's unemployment rate of 7.4 percent (compared with the French average of 10.5 percent).         The explosion of biotech investments in Europe looks set to continue unabated in 2001, with several new European locations set to emerge as strong competitors to the region's traditional biotech "clusters." New initiatives, such as the Dutch government's US$50.6 million investment to support biotechnology development, will undoubtedly prove attractive to biotech businesses looking to establish European operations, by focusing on the specific development needs of start-up operations.         Oxford Intelligence is a UK-based firm of business analysts, specializing in economic development issues. For more information, contact Editor Julia Cox (julia.cox@oxint.com) or visit the company Web site at www.ipaworld.com. Tel: +44 1908 521477.