The biomedical sector is flourishing despite the financial crisis and concerns over economic growth in Europe this year. Sustained investments in Europe, the U.S., and Asia to promote innovation and technological progress highlight the pivotal role that this sector can play for the world’s economy and well-being.
Taping into the full potential of this sector however requires a global network of excellence – building lasting partnerships and co-operations with some of the world`s most important biomedical markets, universities, companies and research institutes.
In Russia the Skolkovo Foundation embarked on such a strategy to make sure that reinvigorated and dynamic biomedical research and development make their contribution to moving the Russia from its historic dependence on the oil and gas industry to an innovation-based economy. The Skolkovo Foundation is striving to make this happen. The Foundation is a non-profit organisation established to create a new global technology hub and to strengthen the links between Russia and international science, technology, education, entrepreneurship and investment communities. The Foundation is overseeing the creation of a Technopark, the Skolkovo Institute of Technology (a new graduate research University established in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the Skolkovo city and the Skolkovo Innovation Centre.
This Centre encompasses five unique talent-driven clusters spanning the areas of information technologies, energy, nuclear, space and biomedicine. To date just over 330 companies and start-ups have joined these Research & Development clusters and benefit from research grants of $50,000 to $10 million, an attractive tax and legal status and co-operations with Russian science facilities and specialists.
With Italy representing the fourth largest market for biomedical products in Europe and ranking third in terms of total number of biotech companies, the Foundation is trying to raise interest in the country’s firms and research institutes.
As a counterpart Russia can bring to the table not only a large market representing a population of roughly 140 million people but an outstanding concentration of human, intellectual and financial capital. A Russian-Italian partnership seems therefore to be a logical step for both countries. Such a partnership could help both expand their markets and profit from the financial and intellectual investments made. These investments will certainly accelerate the development of innovative drugs and technologies and produce cutting-edge research that improves the worldwide quality of life.
Until now a poor level of supportive infrastructure hindered the development of Russia’s biomedical technology industry, despite the country boasting more physicians, hospitals and health care workers per capita than any other country in the world. As a consequence both its medical research and native pharmaceutical market are underdeveloped, and its share of the world market has remained far below its potential at only 0.2%.
This situation is set to change. Russia has a great history of mathematical education and scientific research, but not such a great history of commercialization of the research. It is therefore a major goal of the Skolkovo Biomedical Cluster to create a biotechnology and medical technology (BMT) ecosystem enabling cutting edge scientific research as well as drug and medical equipment development to establish Russia as a global life sciences hub.
To achieve this ambitious objective the priorities of the biomedical cluster have been chosen both to allow Skolkovo to maximise its capabilities and to reflect the needs of the global market. The four resulting strategic pillars concentrate their efforts in the areas of clinical medicine & healthcare, biomedical & life sciences, bio-informatics and industrial biotechnology.
Skolkovo clinical medicine & healthcare aim to promote innovations in personal, preventive and nuclear medicine and to develop new therapeutic vaccines and immunotherapeutics that successfully target the “big killers”.
The biomedicine & life sciences will enable a quick transition of new pharmaceuticals, drug delivery systems and molecular diagnostics from the stage of development to the stage of drug production. Lastly, the areas of bio-informatics and industrial biotechnology will aid computer-based drug design, image analysis and the efficient production of drugs which will further support the overall acceleration of drug development. Recent developments in the pharmaceutical industry indicate an apparent need for innovative pipeline products which can quickly transition from scientific discovery to clinical development and production.
Author: Igor Goryanin
Source: Health section of the most important Italian financial newspaper