“Based on our success, the city of Mainz and the whole region is interested in investing in, and attracting, more biotechs,” says Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s co-founder and chief executive — referring to the group’s hometown near Frankfurt. “This region [of Germany] used to be the ‘pharmacy of the world’ — it was a long time ago, but we are reviving the idea,” he tells the Financial Times in an interview. Sahin is referring to a period before the first world war when Germany had a dominant role in global drug development and manufacturing. Since then, China and India have emerged as pharmaceutical giants and the US has established itself as the world leader in biotechnology — using biological processes to develop healthcare treatments.
Switzerland — home to the biopharma giants Novartis and Roche — as well as Sweden and the Netherlands, which lured the European Medicines Agency from London after Brexit, also have ambitious plans to expand their biotech sectors. But, while Europe has world-class scientists, industry experts say it struggles to compete with the US when commercialising academic knowhow. Reasons for this include a persistent financing gap, a more conservative entrepreneurial culture, a smaller talent pool, and fragmented markets.
