Dossier
(IBEC and ICN), oncology (IRB and VHIO, among others) and numerous hospital research institutes (IDIBAPS, IDIBELL, VHIR, IGTP, IR-Sant Pau) that have been recognized as centres of excellence by the Spanish government. While these research centres were being created and were growing, the life sciences research arena in universities and hospitals has also been strengthened over the past ten years. Naturally the educational programs on offer have also increased. Currently, 10 out of the 12 Catalan universities offer studies related to the biosciences and health, with more than 150 degrees programmes on offer and approximately 20,000 students.
Catalan biotech companies have more than 200 therapeutic and diagnostic products currently under development Innovative ecosystems
The first science park to receive the backing of a Spanish university was created in 1997. The Barcelona Science Park, with links to the UB, led to the creation of the first innovative ecosystem to combine higher education, research and entrepreneurialism in the life sciences. Fifteen years later, the PCB, with nearly 87,000 m2 of floor space (half of which is devoted to laboratories) is home to one of the largest research facilities in the country (the National Genome Analysis Center, CNAG), three research centres (the Institute for Research in Biomedicine of Barcelona, IRB, the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, IBEC and the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona, IBMB-CSIC), numerous foundations, organizations and university research groups, as well as 57 companies of varying sizes, from small 50
Catalan International View
start-ups located in the Science Park through to laboratories for top Catalan pharmaceutical companies like Esteve and Ferrer Internacional. The PCB was the first, but soon not the only, and today Catalonia has some twenty science and technology parks, 15 of which carry out significant activity in the biotechnology and biomedicine arena. As the Director of the Girona Science and Technology Park Pere Condom points out in the latest edition of the Biocat Report (2011), these parks have been key to the development of a sector that clearly benefits from the cluster process since it requires companies to collaborate both amongst themselves and with other stakeholders in the system. According to Condom, this is due, ‘to the dynamic of knowledge creation inherent in this sector of biotechnology, the proximity of basic and applied research, the fast pace of technological change and the multidisciplinary nature of R&D projects’. Such initiatives aimed at boosting research centres and technology parks have emerged in a favourable environment that since the mid-20th century has had a strong industrial fabric linked to the biomedical sector. On one hand, Catalonia accounts for 45% of the pharmaceutical industry in Spain (with large local companies like Almirall, Esteve, Ferrer, GrĂfols, Lacer and Uriach, as well as the national headquarters of multinational companies such as Novartis, Sanofi and Amgen) and, on the other, the region is home to 50% of all Spanish medical technology companies, with large, family-run corporations like Matachana and the Werfen Group. Over the last ten years the sum of this growing scientific capacity and industrial and entrepreneurial tradition has also led to the creation of a group of biotechnology companies that are active in a wide range of fields including the production of new vaccines