Biotech and pharma partner for mutual success
European Business Development
Conference held in Dresden
Biotech
and pharma partner for mutual success
Dresden (October 18, 2012): “Innovations are the key success factor for pharma and biotech,” said Peter Heinrich, Chairman of the Board of the German biotechnology industry organisation (BIO Deutschland) at the annual European Business Development Conference in Dresden. The conference attracted more than 100 CEOs and senior executives from US and European (bio)pharmaceutical, private equity and venture capital companies. Heinrich also pointed out that the path from innovations to patients becomes slightly longer every year due to increased regulatory requirements worldwide. “That is the main reason why pharma and biotech should join forces: one partner brings the innovation, while the other supplies the capital strength and the regulatory knowledge,” Heinrich underlined.
To this end, the conference provided an overview of the current regulatory requirements for the developers of innovative drugs. The focus was on the regulatory aspects that pharma and biotech companies must take into account when they develop drugs in order for the projects to be commercially successful. During the conference, the current European legislation in reference countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom was compared and analysed.
The event concentrated on two increasingly important research fields: firstly, neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders and secondly, new antibiotics and alternatives to antibiotics that fight multi-resistant microorganisms.
Other topics discussed during the conference included the new models and the new spirit for financing innovation: research and development in companies drive sustainable growth in economies. The implementation of new financing models currently seems to be the best choice, given the fact that traditional venture-capital models have gone “out of fashion”.
At the final session, the panellists discussed the new trends and models for mitigating risks while developing new drugs. The risk of failure has not increased, but failing has certainly become more expensive. At the same time, regulatory hurdles have become higher for drug developers. There was a lively discussion on new strategy trends for avoiding risks in drug development. The diagnostics-therapeutic tandems were one of the models presented for safeguarding success in the future.
The European partners at this year’s conference were the European Association of Pharma Biotechnology (EAPB) and European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises (EBE).
The conference was also supported by the Spanish Association of Bioenterprises (ASEBIO), the Dutch Biotech Association (BioFarmind), the UK’s BioIndustry Association (BIA), the Belgian Association for Bioindustries (Bio.Be), Finnish Bioindustries (FIB), the Industrial Biotechnology Association of Canada (BIOTECanada), the Norwegian Bioindustry Association (Norsk Biotekforum), the Swedish Biotech Association (SwedenBio) and the Swiss Biotech Association (SBA).
Furthermore, the conference was sponsored by the platinum sponsor biosaxony, the life science cluster for Saxony; the gold sponsors Qiagen and Merck Serono; and the silver sponsors Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, BioCrea and Ferring.
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