EIT Health, EIT Manufacturing and CEBR present a European Landscape on Biomanufacturing during HTID event

• Following European Commission President Von der Leyen President announcement about the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), EIT Health and EIT Manufacturing have presented a European Biomanufacturing Landscape.
• The European landscape on biomanufacturing – coordinated by the Council of European BioRegions – covers 18 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Scandinavia (Danemark, Norway, Sweden) Spain, Switzerland, Slovakia, United Kingdom.
• The landscape is mapping each country ecosystem of education, research to innovation and business in the biomanufacturing field highlighting their main assets.
• During the HTID round-table “Industrialising Europe: where to start?”, the authors have shared their recommendations to reinforce the biomanufacturing capacity of Europe in synergy with other EU initiatives (HERA, InvestEU, HorizonEurope).

The Panorama of Biomanufacturing Ecosystems in Europe is an initiative of EIT Health, co-conducted with EIT Manufacturing and coordinated by the CEBR – Council of European BioRegions, with the objective of exploring the conditions conducive to the emergence, development and industrialisation of disruptive biomanufacturing technologies for advanced therapies or medical technologies in Europe.

More specifically, the reporters conducted interviews with representatives of these networks in the 18 European countries to better understand the opportunities and specificities in terms of education, research, innovation, investment, and regulatory/logistical frameworks in order to:

• Validate the relevant barriers (scientific, technologic, education & skills, environmental, production costs, and processes)
• Identify opportunities in Europe for disruptive technologies which could disruptive technologies which could improve productivity of bioproducts and medical technologies
• Outline the potential synergies with European initiatives to accelerate the integration of innovative technologies to promote production within EU Member States.
• Outline the potential opportunities for harnessing the capital risk co-investments in promising European SMEs on the sector, therefore, making EU Venture Capital Market more attractive, using as an eg. the Venture Centre of Excellence programme in support of the Health IPCEI (Important Projects of Common European Interest)..

The key learnings from the European Landscape on Biomanufacturing were presented on Monday 4 October during the session “Industrialising Europe: where to start?” at the HealthTech Innovation Days event by Jérôme Fabiano, EIT Health France External Affairs Officer, Klaus Beetz EIT Manufacturing CEO and Marc Dechamps, CEBR Board President focusing on three main levers of actions:

• Education gap: Foster collaboration and strengthen European capacities, leveraging and connecting existing educational programmes. The collaboration efforts between these initiatives and programs should be facilitated through dedicated funding programs and can be connected through both the CEBR cluster community and EIT Health and EIT Manufacturing at the national /regional level
• Innovation gap: One of the major challenges of biomanufacturing activities in Europe lies both in reducing production costs and improving the yields of processes while working on increasing its sustainability. Massive investment is needed to meet this challenge as many of the existing innovations require scaling up and are driven by startups or CDMOs that are struggling to raise funds in Europe
• Financing gap: The report shows the rich fabric of startups and SMEs active in the field of biomanufacturing and medical technologies, but it also shows that most of the large investments made in recent years come from non-European players, particularly in CDMOs

*The landscape will evolve over time

Download the landscape executive summary and the countries from the first wave: