EuropaBio celebrates 25 years of Biotech Innovation with a year-long programme
EuropaBio Celebrates 25 Years of Biotech Innovation with 2021 Anniversary Programme
EuropaBio, Europe’s leading life sciences industry association, has kicked off 2021 celebrations to mark its foundation a quarter of a century ago. The anniversary has the mission to celebrate the most significant scientific and commercial advances in European biotechnology for each of the last 25 years.
During the year, EuropaBio, together with its members and partners, will nominate the most impactful cross-sector developments and showcase how they have impacted society and the environment. The 25 years of scientific advances will be amplified through webinars, interviews and reviews discussing some of the key drivers of biotechnology. The year will end with a gala evening in Brussels and presentation of the 2021 SME Award from EuropaBio.
A dedicated website at www.europabio25.org will host the showcased scientific and business breakthroughs for biotechnology, nominated by members, and will house all activities to be shared with the biotech community.
Dr Claire Skentelbery, Director General of EuropaBio, commented “2021 is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the immense scientific and societal advances through biotechnology since 1996. This year, of all years, shows the vital role that biotech plays in a healthy society, while the Green Deal brings biotech to the heart of the drive towards a sustainable planet”.
Follow the EuropaBio anniversary celebrations for the whole of 2021 through our weekly newsletter and visit the dedicated anniversary website at www.europabio25.org.
EuropaBio celebrated its inaugural National Associations Council Summit: Collaborations and trust are vital to build a responsive and competitive biotech sector in Europe
On 11 May 2021, EuropaBio organised its inaugural National Associations Council Summit ‘Building on Biotechnology: From vaccines to economic Growth for Europe’. The Summit was co-hosted by P-Bio and supported by the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU.
This Summit kicked off with welcome message of Manuel Heitor, Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education. The Minister acknowledged the critical role of networked national associations representing the biotechnology sector. ‘We need to enrich diversity and understand the opportunities to build networks, and EuropaBio can be a game changer in the overall European context’, he said.
Dr Claire Skentelbery, Director General of EuropaBio stressed that biotechnology has an important impact on the economic performance within the EU countries and shared the results of the recent economic report published with the Wifor Institute. ‘Biotechnology is an economic force: a substantial employer and skills generator, which grows additional services’ sectors and creates major clusters within Europe’, she said.
The first part of the event was devoted to discussing new biotechnology ecosystems in Europe. Companies active in the current response to Covid-19, P-Bio presented the biotech landscape and economic ambitions for Portugal, before Novartis and Pfizer shared with participants how they have built vital collaborations across the biotech-pharma spectrum to deliver breakthrough vaccine technologies to patients at unprecedented speed and how they envision future potential in the sector, including a change to their own perspectives learned from working with agile SMEs.
The second session invited us to look into the future - speed and strength from biotech. SMEs Immunethep and UNION Therapeutics discussed the critical framework needed to build further from national and European ecosystem advances from Covid, accelerating biotech contribution to Europe’s economic development.
The event was wrapped up with a panel discussion with representatives from the National Councils of Lithuania, France, Portugal and Norway. The representatives discussed the top priorities to build a competitive biotech economy in Europe. Speakers stressed the importance of collaboration between academia, small companies and large companies. ‘Biotech is not only about vaccines, we have to look beyond it and use the full potential of the sector for the benefit of society,’ said Simão Soares, P-BIO.
Agne Vaitkevičiene, the Lithuanian Biotechnology Association emphasised the importance of national strategies. ‘Biotech in Lithuania is one of the fastest growing in Europe. However, on the national level we are learning to build a clear strategy and better investment in innovations.‘
Chloe Evans, France Biotech highlighted the importance of late-stage funding, biomanufacturing, market access and technology transfer ‘It is important to be very quick when it comes to transferring the technology. International collaboration is the key aspect in ensuring that this process runs smoothly’.
Hanne Mette Dyrlie Kristensen, The Life Science Cluster (Norway) shared experience, challenges and lessons learnt from the pandemic in the light of biotechnology, particularly as a country Associated to the EU. According to her, collaboration and knowledge exchange are vital in developing new solutions in the sector.
See the video highlights here.
Measuring the Economic Footprint of the Biotechnology Industry in Europe
On March 4, 2021, EuropaBio hosted the event ‘Measuring the Economic Footprint of the Biotechnology Industry in Europe’ to showcase the same-titled report.
The study, from the WifOR Institute, looked at the economic impact of the biotechnology industry within the (then) 28 European member states, in terms of gross value added (GVA), employment and trade in 2018.
European GDP benefitted by €38.5 bn and, including spill over effects, that number rises to €78.7bn. The direct contribution adds up to about 1.5% of total industrial GVA within the countries assessed, supported by 223,000 direct jobs rising to over 700,000 with associated employment.
The event brought together the report authors to present their findings in full, and a panel discussion with EuropaBio Members BASF, Gilead, and Bio.be/Essenscia to plot the future economic pathway for biotechnology across sectors.
The webinar then closed with EuropaBio Council Directors Bernard Grimm and Agnes Borg presenting industry policy and regulatory priorities from Members, where EuropaBio works to achieve the robust ecosystem biotechnology economic and societal contributions.
The full webinar recording is available HERE.
EFIB 2021 ’Delivering the EU Green Deal: Industrial biotechnology into business’: Registration is Open
6-7 October 2021, industry leaders, SMEs representatives, policy makers and academia are expected in Vienna, Austria to join Europe’s leading event on industrial biotechnology and the bioeconomy under the title ‘Delivering the EU Green Deal: Industrial biotechnology into business’.
Industrial Biotechnology is currently worth €23 billion representing just 6% in sales of the overall worldwide chemicals market. However, it is significantly out-performing the overall chemicals market at an impressive 20% annual growth rate and has the potential to become the dominant technology of tomorrow’s chemicals industry, representing a huge future opportunity.
In order to understand and overcome these challenges and prosper in tomorrow’s bioeconomy, for more than ten years, industry experts throughout the vibrant and innovative biobased community have come together to one central location every year to discuss the key issues and gain a snapshot of the most significant developments on scale up of commercial biorefineries around the world.
Last year, we celebrated the Industrial biotech communities’ latest achievements in harnessing the power of innovation to deliver solutions to global grand challenges. Influential brands and industry leaders met with a broad range of stakeholders and policy makers to discuss the transformative potential of Industrial Biotechnology to create a smarter and more sustainable future.
For registration and more information about EFIB2021, please visit our website.