Home » Bioneers is born, Belgium and Italy together for innovation

Bioneers is born, Belgium and Italy together for innovation

by admin
Bioneers is born, Belgium and Italy together for innovation

Team up, have shared infrastructures. But also avoiding the “me too” syndrome and trying to open up new avenues of research. Finally, review the legislation on intellectual property, streamlining bureaucratic procedures, and work on the number of Technology Transfer Offices, which today are too many, parceled out and with little staff. These are some of the solutions indicated by the experts who participated in the presentation of “Bioneers – pioneers for life sciences”, the three-year program for the promotion of Italian culture, innovation and biotech which involves and commits the Belgian Embassy in Italy and Galapagos Biopharma Italy. The goal, in addition to being prepared for 2026, when biotechnological products will acquire the majority share in the top 100 drugs by sales, is also to keep up with Belgium, which has invested heavily in the sector in recent years of medical biotech, up to establishing itself today as one of the main European players. In fact, although the number of companies dedicated to biopharma is greater in Italy (376 against 140), Belgium today represents the first stock market in Europe in this sector, with a number of employees five times higher than that of Italian companies, which are mostly micro or small, and almost double the number of employees in Research and Development. A growth process that derives from a driving force from the companies present in the area and which has also benefited from an important intervention by the Federal Government, as underlined by the Report “Policies and investments in the Biotech sector” by the Institute for Competitiveness I-com and made known as part of the “Bioneers” project.

See also  "The doctor answers", the appeal of the cardiologist Danzi: "Go back to the exams, the heart needs it"

“Italian research in the biotech field has great strengths – underlines Maria Rescigno, Pro Rector with responsibility for research at Humanitas University, who together with Franco Locatelli, President of the Higher Health Council and Giuseppe Ippolito, Director General of Research and innovation in healthcare of the Ministry of Health, received a Special Mention from the Belgian Ambassador Pierre-Emmanuel De Bauw as recognition of Italian excellence – there are sectors of excellence such as immunology and oncology, and a capacity to get results with few resources. But we have to go one step further, and try to think “out of the box”, explore new research areas in different ways. Only in this way will we be able to reduce the “brain drain” phenomenon whereby so many young talents trained in Italy leave our country to work elsewhere. “We are used to working in difficulties – comments Ippolito – but we must avoid fragmentation, that phenomenon whereby many people in different places apply themselves to the same research area. Instead, it would be necessary to have specialized areas in the country, real clusters of excellence”. Greater public-private collaboration is also needed, adds Locatelli, and structured collaborations, with the ability to ask the right questions to get adequate answers.

Indeed, the I-Com Report shows how much, from this point of view, Italy still has a long way to go: in Belgium, the financing of innovation in the life science field benefits from a series of public and semi-public realities from public and private investment funds. In Italy, on the other hand, private involvement in the financing of biomedical innovation is more limited, although in the first half of 2022 the medical sector represents the fifth largest Italian sector by concentration of venture capital investments. “A critical node in the Italian innovative panorama is the involvement of private financing through risk capital”, adds Stefano Da Empoli, president of I-Com, presenting the Report. However, there have been important advances in this area. Venture capital investment in Italian biotech industries amounted to €177 million in 2021, up 97% year-on-year. The result of these synergies is, for example, the fact that Belgium represents an extremely attractive destination on the international scene as regards the conduct of clinical trials. On average, approval for a Phase I trial in Belgium takes 15 days, one of the shortest in Europe. With its 23.2 trials started per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, this country is second only to Denmark (with about 27 trials), while Italy, albeit slightly above the European average, does not go beyond 8.2 trials per 100,000 inhabitants.

See also  So in 10 years Belgium has become the cradle of biotech and the lesson for Italy

For this reason it seems important to move from the point of view of Open Innovation, the paradigm that provides supply chain synergy in clinical innovation, from Research and Development and experimentation to production and logistics, a paradigm which is particularly strong in Belgium and which in Italy is only now catching on. Belgium and Italy are two complementary models for the development of biopharma companies, and the “Bioneers” program therefore represents the challenge of cooperation for the progress of medical biotechnologies and digital health at the service of patients and the territory.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy