BioWorld International Correspondent

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Medicon Valley, the transnational region spanning the greater Copenhagen area in Denmark and the Sk ne region in southern Sweden, is laying claim to global leadership in diabetes R&D capability.

A new Boston Consulting Group report that assesses the region's strengths in research and development identifies diabetes research, along with neuroscience, inflammation and cancer research, as its key strengths. The study, which was researched by Boston Consulting Group's Copenhagen and Stockholm offices, was published to coincide with the BIO-Scandinavia partnering event in the Danish capital last week. It did not focus on academic performance alone, but mapped research efforts with critical mass in the region to corporate R&D and to the commercial potential of each field.

"We essentially screened the region on three critical dimensions," said Jacob Schambye of the group's Copenhagen office. "There are four areas where this region has what it takes."

The study includes assessments of Medicon Valley's capabilities in each area vs. those of the leading centers worldwide. In diabetes and neuroscience, according to the report, Medicon Valley boasts globally competitive strengths in academic research combined with a significant corporate R&D outlay in those areas. Novo Nordisk A/S, of Bagsvaerd, Denmark, and Copenhagen-based H. Lundbeck A/S have major franchises in diabetes and CNS disease, respectively. Biotechnology firms such as the Danish subsidiary of Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc., Azign Bioscience A/S, BioImage A/S and Zealand Pharmaceuticals A/S also are active in diabetes, while NeuroSearch A/S is the principal biotech firm focusing on neurological disorders.

Although the report cedes primacy to Boston in terms of academic diabetes research and to Seattle in terms of the number of biotechnology firms focused on the area, it claims an overall edge for Medicon Valley because of the presence of Novo Nordisk. Indeed, the big pharma presence in the region has been a key factor in the development of the biotechnology sector. Some 42 percent of the employees working in the region's biotechnology companies were recruited from pharmaceutical firms.

In neuroscience, Medicon Valley lags behind San Diego and Boston, which the report identifies as the world's leading international research centers. However, it does have a world-leading position within the area of tissue repair, through the work of several groups at Lund University.

The region also has strong academic research in cancer and inflammation, according to the report, but with less corresponding strength in corporate research. Paradoxically, respiratory disease is not considered a key focus in the region, even though it receives more corporate R&D funding than any other area, courtesy of London-based AstraZeneca plc's center in Lund, which has an estimated annual spend of US$329 million. "We don't see a matching strength on the academic side in terms of funding and performance," Schambye said.

The report makes four specific recommendations that Medicon Valley needs to address. It needs to ensure continued funding for public research, as Denmark and Sweden both have a disproportionately low level of public R&D spending relative to private funding; to strengthen its capacity for commercializing research through patenting and technology transfer; to make the region a more attractive environment for conducting Phase I clinical trials; and to promote greater levels of collaboration between the Swedish and Danish parts of the region.

Its focus on the region's particular strengths may be evidence of a degree of regional specialization creeping into European biotechnology. "It is obvious to us that we cannot compete on size alone," Schambye said.

The two agencies that commissioned the report plan to use it in their efforts to attract overseas investors to the region. "We will build up our marketing platform around these strongholds," Claus Frelle-Petersen, director of strategy and development at Copenhagen Capacity, told BioWorld International. "I would say for the first time that we have strong evidence that this is a very strong biotech region," said Ulf berg, director of Malmo-based Region Sk ne Inward Investment. "We now have a good product to sell."

The strong international presence at last week's event - half the participants were from outside the region - indicates that this message is already beginning to be heard.

"This seems to be an emerging area that needs attention," Bruce Pratt, of Cambridge, Mass.-based, Genzyme Corp., told BioWorld International. Pratt, an American, has been based at Genzyme's European headquarters in Naarden, the Netherlands, since April. He has a two-and-a-half-year mission to forge collaborations with the European research community that are of strategic interest to Genzyme. "It was felt we needed to improve our connections to the European science landscape," he said.

Genzyme also has established a Nordic office in Copenhagen, while earlier this month, Slough, UK-based, Celltech Group plc stated it was opening a base in the city in order "to create a network with other biotech companies around the Medicon Valley."