Vive le biotech
Biotech in France is thriving with the aid of generous government tax rebates and greatly relaxed labour laws. Susan Birks visited some of the country's major biotech clusters to find out why it pays to site research labs in France
Biotech in France is thriving with the aid of generous government tax rebates and greatly relaxed labour laws. Susan Birks visited some of the country's major biotech clusters to find out why it pays to site research labs in France
France has had favourable tax deals for research companies for some time, but the country's socialist employment policies have put off past investors from locating their labs in what would otherwise be a favourable global location. Recent changes to the employment law by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, however, have set telephones of the Invest in France agency buzzing. Companies are now clamouring to take up the favourable investment offerings and locate their research base in France.
In addition to the very favourable tax allowances, the country is home to many up-and-coming bio-business parks that offer low cost rents, ample workforce and excellent transport links. The French government has also vigorously adopted the practice of building business clusters, to help companies network, find partner companies for joint collaborations and share technology and resources.
One of the country's largest bio-clusters is centred on Lille, in Northern France - an area regarded as the Paris-London-Brussels triangle due to its advanced rail networks. The bio-cluster includes the largest University hospital campus in Europe, comprising seven hospitals as well as 50 academic laboratories and 90 medical device and biotech companies all on one site.
Nearby, the Eurasante Park is one of the fastest growing bio-business parks covering some 300 hectares, while in the heart of Lille is Metropole Science City, one of the major scientific complexes. Providing a suitably trained workforce is Lille's University of Science and Technology and Grandes Escoles (science graduate schools), which together cater for 50,000 students and house 85 research labs.
Further West, the BioValley cluster in Alsace - covering Strasbourg, parts of Germany and Switzerland - boasts more than 600 pharma, biotech and med-tech companies. It offers financial incentives that enable up to 45% of selective r&d projects to be government funded. Further tax benefits mean companies may only have to cover 25% of the overall project costs.
At the southern end of France, the Paca-est Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur is another growing bio-cluster, comprising 77 biotech companies and 300 companies in the life sciences or medical technology fields. The region's Sophia Antipolis international science park is home to both big and small pharma and biotech companies.
All these regions are looking to bring in new investment, creating future wealth and jobs for the country. It is a policy proving attractive to both established and start-up companies. A recent KPMG report highlighted how the low cost of expenditure in these regions compared to other European locations make them very competitive for setting up businesses (see figure 1).
BayerSchering Pharma, has taken advantage of these benefits in deciding to relocate its French divisional headquarters form Paris to Lille. Now called Bayer Sante, the French healthcare division says it is looking to form partnerships with new biotech entities, because they are better at finding new drugs than Big Pharma.
Bayer Sante is building a new office block at the Eurasante Park that, on completion in October 2008, will accommodate around 350 administrative and support staff, transferring from the Puteaux, Paris site that will close.
Olivier Ertzbischoff, medical director, of Bayer Sante said that France offered the highest rate of tax credit for r&d and the fact that support services such as clinical trials studies are also classed as r&d meant Bayer Sante could also benefit.
GSK Biologicals is another global company taking advantage of the favourable economic conditions. It is investing Euro 500m over the next five years, some of which will be spent on a new vial filling facility for vaccines being built in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, in Northern France, close to the Belgium border.
This facility should be operational 2008 and will create some 600 jobs by 2011. The site is expected to produce more than 300m vaccine doses a year and, in particular, GSK Biologicals" cervical cancer candidate vaccine, Cervarix. It will have a purpose-built area for freeze-drying the vaccines and will be a pilot for a second facility to be built in the US.
The freeze-drying operation requires specialist engineers and technicians, and sourcing that specialised labour was an influential factor in GSK Biologicals choice of location. France offered government-backed training partnerships through universities and schools to ensure workers with the required academic profile will be available in the future.
Lille is equally attractive to smaller enterprises. It is home to emerging biopharmaceutical company Genfit, for example, which identifies new therapeutic targets and develops drug candidates in partnership with companies such as Sanofi-Aventis, Solvay, Pierre Fabre, MercK and Servier. Its focus is on cardiovascular risks and it aims to attack atherosclerosis, diabetes and obesity simultaneously, using a single molecule. The company has 130 employees, including some 100 scientists and is listed on the Alternext stock exchange. It says its location enabled strong links with local hospitals that helped it source investment and form early alliances with pharma companies.
The low cost French centre of the BioValley cluster, Strasbourg is also popular with research companies. Among the biotech companies investing in this region, NeoMPS is spending e10m on new facilities. This provider of custom peptides for clinical trials, founded in 1986, is now majority owned by French giant SNPE but is independently run and its investments are self-financed. A subsidised loan by the French authorities is helping to finance the building of the new 2,400m2 facility and the new labs and cleanrooms for production will enable it to double GMP production capacity at the site.
Transgene is another biopharmaceutical company expanding its cGMP facilities in Strasbourg for production of its lead therapeutic vaccine candidate TG 4001.
Currently in clinical development for treating cervical cancer, the antigen specific therapeutic vaccine TG 4001 has completed Phase II studies and is due to enter into Phase III studies in early 2008. Roche has signed an agreement to help develop and commercialise the vaccine designed to treat precancerous cervical lesions in 20-35 year old patients that have contracted the Human Papilloma Virus 16.
Strasbourg's low business costs is one reason why Prestwick Chemical is based on the Alsace BioValley Parc d'Innovation in Illkirch. Founded in 1999, Prestwick Chemical aims to accelerate discovery and development of small molecule drugs. The company currently employs 36 specialised chemists including 18 medicinal chemists with PhD and post-doctoral experience.
As a research-based business Prestwick's chief financial officer Paul Bikard finds the French government's research-based tax credit system very efficient. Bikard adds there are few experts in medicinal chemistry around, and Prestwick is unusual in the number of graduates it has in this field dedicated to researching client projects on a contract basis.
The company has a library of 1000 compounds that are now "off patent" and is building a new library of 400 compounds around a new scaffold. It completed the construction of its current facilities, hosting 32 lab benches in 2004 and has the possibility to expand to 48 if required.
For new start-ups, the Alsace bio-cluster can provide office and lab space where companies can collaborate and share resources. Four such companies finding benefit in being housed in one building on the Illkirch Innovation Park are:
- AliX, an early stage drug discovery company focussed on nuclear hormone receptors. Founded in 2002 as spin-off from the Institute of Genetics and Molecular & cellular Biology (IGBMC), it offers purified proteins for high throughput screening; crystallization and crystallographic structure determination of protein ligand complexes; and ligand screening using non-denaturing mass spectrometry.
- AlsaChim offers custom synthesis of stable isotopically-labelled molecules including pharmaceutical intermediates, peptides, biologically active molecules, controlled drug standards and NMR reference standards. Founded in 2005, this company is researching new syntheses of stable labelled molecules for research studies.
- NMRtec, a spin-off from Montpellier University offers a full range of NMR analytical tools and services.
- Polyplus Transfection, which is focused on developing reagents for intracellular delivery of biomolecules. Its expertise includes in vitro and in vivo delivery of genes, oligonucleotides, siRNA and proteins.
Sun, sea and science
When it comes to quality of life, however, few locations can rival that offered by the South of France in terms of good food, weather and location. Combine this with favourable tax incentives and companies are eager to move in and staff rarely leave! This region has attracted 200 biotech companies generating €1.5bn of turnover. The region is also home to fully-fledged pharma companies with large facilities, such as Galderma specialising in topical pharmaceuticals, through to start-ups with big ideas, such as NiCox.
Galderma recently inaugurated its new research and preclinical development facility in Sophia Antipolis and now boasts the world's largest r&d centre dedicated to dermatology. Its new 19,300m2 facility accommodates scientists with expertise ranging from genomics to proteomics, from high throughput technologies such as screening, chemistry and toxico-genomics to early pharmacokinetics.
At the other extreme, NiCox is a small product-driven biopharmaceutical company in Nice developing nitric oxide-donating drugs for treating inflammation and cardio metabolic disease. Founded by an Italian using French venture capital, NiCox is now a public funded company with resources a focused on its two lead compounds in late stage development - one, for the treatment of the symptoms of osteoarthritis, is in Phase III studies and the other, for the treatment of type-2 diabetes is in Phase II.
President Michele Garufi describes the company as developing "Big Pharma type compounds" and while it is now looking at partnerships to market the drugs, it also plans to market some in its own right.
All these companies enjoy the patronage of a government that sees research, at all stages of development, as crucial to the country's future economic growth. Working with other economic agencies in providing training and logistics, the country now also has new labour regulations - the final ingredient that could make France the investor's "plat du jour".