Germany to invest Euro 800m in pharma biotech to 2011

The German research ministry plans to invest more than Euro 800m in biotech for medicines development between now and 2011.

"We want to strengthen pharmaceutical research in Germany and make sure that new treatments reach patients more quickly," said research minister Annette Schavan.

In 2006, biotech-based treatments accounted for €3.1bn in sales in Germany, 12% of the total pharmaceuticals market and 31% of the market for medicines launched in the past five years.

Germany has about 350 biotech firms, of which 100 are pharmaceutical biotechs; this is out of a total of 2,000 in Europe. However, only six of the 140 biotech drugs approved in 2005 came from German companies. Most were from the US, the UK and Switzerland, according to an analysis by the European Commission.

"We want to meet the challenge of catching up. We will encourage the best ideas and also favour the most creative co-operations between scientists and companies," Schavan added.

The investment will be made in eight different areas:

• €100m for a BioPharma contest. Participants must offer strategies to optimise the potential of Germany's pharma biotech. The winner will be announced in October 2008.
• €372m for fundamental research (genomics, proteomics, systematic biology);
• €30m for the GO-Bio fund to create start-ups;
• €49m for new technologies in pharmaceutical development;
• €20m to find new biological and diagnostic molecular markers;
• €100m for the BioChancePlus fund for pharmaceutical research in small and medium-sized companies;
• €159m for clinical research and the creation of cooperation networks between centres participating in clinical trials;
• €10m to fund co-operation between the public sector and the industry.