Saxony biotech initiative leads to regional centres
A region of eastern Germany is rapidly becoming the gateway for biotech development throughout Europe, the US and Canada. Dubbed 'Biosaxony', it features a high concentration of r&d companies which, in partnership with academia, pioneer the latest advances in biotechnology. Supported by regional government investment of more than e196m (US$230m) over a period of five years, the main focus of the initiative lies in the subsidised establishment of regional biotechnology centres in Leipzig and Dresden.
'Bio City Leipzig' concentrates heavily on research in the field of tissue engineering and biomedicine, and also acts as an incubator for start-up companies. The investment costs of approximately €50m ($59m) are borne by the state of Saxony and the city of Leipzig. Three quarters of the 215,280ft2 of laboratory and production space in this one part of biosaxony will be rented out to start-ups and established biotech companies, while the rest will be used by the University of Leipzig.
British DNA engineering company Gene Bridges recently located its headquarters in Biosaxony to take advantage of the area's unique concentration of biotech expertise, as did Canadian genomics company Cenix BioScience. US companies are also eyeing up Biosaxony, due to the low-cost of facilities as well as access to leading experts in fields ranging from genomics and bioinformatics to tissue engineering and drug discovery.