The Munich Biotech Cluster

The Munich Biotech Cluster – from Idea to Success – how to finance innovation
The strength of the Munich Biotech Cluster – which under the leadership of Professor Domdey has been fed in the past 15 years with more than € 3.5 billion private investments – is its close networking between industry and academic research partners. It is considered by PwC as one of the most successful European Biotech clusters. A number of programmes have been developed to facilitate and fund the translation of academic research into innovation, and the development of new biotech start-ups.
Speaker: Professor Horst Domdey; Managing Director of the BioM Biotech Cluster Development
Time: 1 October 2013, 13.00-14.00
Venue: Lecture Hall, Jan Waldenströms gata 35, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö.
Host: Innovation Office, Lund University Diabetes Center.
No registration is required
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The Greater Munich Area is one of the leading biotechnology locations in Europe with 20,000 employees in more than 350 companies in the life science sector. In addition to 129 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), there are subsidiaries of globally active biotech and pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations as well as suppliers and wholesalers. Most of the local SMEs are spin-offs from Munich’s excellent academic institutions: Ludwig Maximilian University, Technical University, Max Planck Institutes of Biochemistry, Neurobiology, and Psychiatry, and the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Health.
The focus of the cluster lies on pharmaceutical biotechnology with more than 50% of the SMEs being active in research and development of therapeutics and diagnostics. Within the Munich Biotech Cluster, a number of new cancer therapies, e.g., against leukaemias, lung cancer or solid tumors, are currently being developed. But there have also been big advances in the treatment of cardiovascular, infectious and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Munich’s SME drug pipeline currently counts 60 preclinical projects and more than 80 drug candidates that are currently being tested in clinical trials.
By proposing an innovative strategy which aims to develop the Munich Biotech Cluster into a Center of Excellence in Personalized Medicine, Munich became one of the 15 winners in the “Leading Edge Cluster Competition” of the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education. Based on this success, around 100 million € are currently being spent within a period of 5 years by more than 100 partners from industry and academia in around 40 research, development and structural projects in the fields of personalized medicine and targeted therapies.
Horst Domdey, a trained biochemist, received his PhD from the University of Munich in 1979. He held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried (Germany), the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Epalinges (Switzerland), the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla (SA), the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (USA), and the Gene Center of the University of Munich (Germany), before he became there Associate Professor for Biochemistry in 1994. In 1994 he co-founded MediGene, one of the first biotech companies in Germany. Since 1997 he has been the Managing Director of BioM, the cluster development and management organization of the Munich Biotech Cluster.