Biotop-report 2011

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By far the biggest pharmaceutical company in the region is Bayer 

HealthCare Pharmaceuticals. Its research is focusing on four areas: 

Cardiology & Hematology, Oncology, Diagnostic Imaging and 

Women’s Healthcare. In 2010 Bayer HealthCare spent more than 

2 billion Euros on R&D. BERLIN-CHEMIE AG, a subsidiary of the 

Menarini  Group  employs  almost  3,000  people  in  Berlin.  Sanofi, 

the sixth largest pharmaceutical company in the world, came 

in 1996 to Berlin and has since grown considerably. In 2010, a 

comprehensive research partnership was established with the 

Charité. Pfizer has its headquarters in Berlin since 2008. In 2010 

B.Braun expanded its vials production capacities in Berlin with an 

investment of 20 Mio Euros. The company plans further substan-

tial investments in the coming years. With approximately 10,000 

employees, sales of the pharmaceutical companies in Berlin-

Brandenburg were almost 6 

billion Euros in 2010. Phar-

maceutical industry is com-

plemented by innovative bio-

technology companies that 

have developed a number of 

novel therapeutic approaches 

in recent years, such as the 

next generation glycoopti-

mized antibodies of Glycotope, 

NOXXON’s therapeutic spie-

gelmers, the RNAi technology 

from Silence Therapeutics and 

the gene therapy of Mologen.

Well connected

An  important  prerequisite  for  the  successful  development  of 

the region lies in the strong network of science and industry in 

drug  development.  That’s  why  in  2007  the  Leibniz  Institut  für 

Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) and BioTOP Berlin-Brandenburg 

established the Network for Drug Discovery & Development Ber-

lin-Brandenburg as an open interdisciplinary initiative with the 

aim  to  accelerate  the  transfer  of  clinical  relevant  findings  into 

innovative drugs and therapeutic concepts. The network guides 

researchers through the highly complex process from target dis-

covery to the point of preclinical development of drug candidates 

and helps locating resources needed in each phase. This ranges 

from the initial high throughput/high content screening (HTS/

HCS) during the assay development phase to the development 

of a drug candidate. The lat-

ter is usually sponsored by the 

pharmaceutical industry due 

to the significant commitment 

in terms of costs, resources, 

and time.

Excellence in Drug Discovery and Development

In the Capital region, both pharma and biotech industry are developing dynamically. 

Along with the emergence of new biotech companies an increasing number of interna-

tional pharmaceutical companies are discovering the advantages of this region for their 

European operations and are extending their activities here.

Dr. Sabine Sydow

Head of vfa bio, interest group for  

biotechnology within the  

German Association of Research-Based 

Pharmaceutical Companies

Berlin Region Positioned Excellently

»

Medical biotechnology offers tremendous potential for 

providing severely diseased patients with new therapy 

options for which there is still high medical need. Biophar-

maceuticals have already shown impressively during recent 

years how effectively they can help patients. To ensure that 

the innovation and investment motor of medical biotech-

nology keeps running smoothly in future, however, inno-

vations  must  also  be  rewarded  adequately  and  reliably. 

And that requires dialogue between all stakeholders in the 

healthcare sector. The Berlin-Brandenburg region is certain-

ly in an excellent position to play a leading role in health 

research and biotechnology and make a strong contribution 

in the interest of patients and for our region.

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The network’s coordination office is located at the FMP in Berlin-

Buch. Most of the current network partners - academic research 

institutes, universities and their associated medical facilities, as 

well as biotech and pharmaceutical companies – are located in 

Berlin and Brandenburg.

International cooperation

Cooperation at European level is becoming more and more impor-

tant for large-scale research projects. Again, the region has major 

initiatives in the lead.

In November 2010 the preparatory phase of the EU funded 

research infrastructure EU-OPENSCREEN started. EU-OPENSCREEN, 

which is coordinated by the FMP, will draw together, in a com-

mon platform, the many individual European laboratories that 

are studying potential drug candidates. Information about the 

biological effects of chemical substances will be collected from 

across Europe, aligned to common standards, and made pub-

licly available. The screening laboratories will thus form a net-

work that extends beyond national borders and is accessible to 

other researchers. The EU considers this initiative among the most 

important international research infrastructures of the future. The 

centralized  database  created  by  the  project  will  give  research-

ers open access to everything that is known about a substance, 

obtained from a wide variety of experiments. 

Consortium for genomic cancer biomarker development

In March 2011 OncoTrack, an international consortium of over 60 

scientists, managed by Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals and the 

Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, launched 

one of Europe’s largest collaborative academic-industry research 

projects  to  develop  and  assess  novel  approaches  for  identifica-

tion of new markers for colon cancer. The essential objective of 

OncoTrack is to establish new methods for systematic next gen-

eration oncology biomarker development. Detailed molecular 

characterization of high quality tumor tissue will provide critical 

information to support the fundamental understanding of cancer 

and the influence of heterogeneity on response to colon cancer 

therapy. 

The project is partnered with a selected group of major glob-

al pharmaceutical companies, composed of AstraZeneca, Bayer 

HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen 

Pharmaceutica,  Merck,  Pfizer  and  Roche  Diagnostics,  whose  in-

kind contributions to the project are matched by funding from 

the IMI Joint Undertaking, resulting in a total budget of more 

than 25 Million Euros. Among the partners are also the Berlin 

based companies Epo and Alacris Theranostics as well as the 

Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Dr. David Henderson

Principal Scientist in Translational Sciences at Bayer 

HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, and Coordinator of 

OncoTrack, an international consortium funded by the 

Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a young and unique 

public-private partnership between the pharmaceutical 

industry and the European Union.

Novel approaches for identification of new 

markers for colon cancer

»

OncoTrack is a prime example of the manner in which 

Public-Private Partnerships are breaking new ground 

in collaborative research involving academic and industrial 

partners. We have assembled a team of clinicians, molecu-

lar scientists, bioinformaticians and associated experts; thus 

creating a Europe-wide network of complementary capabil-

ities extending far beyond the scope of a traditional ‘one-

on-one’ industry-academic collaboration. The joint efforts 

of this consortium will generate the critical mass required to 

tackle the complex task of using large-scale genomic analysis 

as a basis for rational selection of novel cancer biomarkers.

Dr. Matthias Schroff

Head of Research and CEO, MOLOGEN AG

Excellent Clinical Results

»

With the proof of the active principle of the colorectal 

cancer medicine MGN1703 and the start of our clini-

cal Phase II/III trial, MOLOGEN AG achieved important mile-

stones in 2010. In addition to the two current clinical stud-

ies with MGN1703 and the renal cancer drug MGN1601, we 

will prepare a third clinical cancer study in 2011. Due to 

our successful capital increases we are positioned very well 

to conduct licensing negotiations and broaden our product 

pipeline considerably.

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