The Dutch Landscape
Dutch academia and leading industry players, both large and small, have teamed up with the government to help boost life science and healthcare innovations. A number of considerable initiatives form the core of a three pronged strategy:
1) Building top quality research infrastructure
2) Bundling top research groups in academia and industry to create critical mass
3) Realizing the Benefit for both society (health) as well as the Dutch economy (wealth)
Build: Genomics and Parelsnoer (String of Pearls: biobanks)
The existing top quality life science research infrastructure is further strengthened by fundamental genomics research, carried out by the Netherlands Genomics Initiative, and the set up of biobanks (the Parelsnoer project).
The Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI) coordinates research in various genomics fields, building an infrastructure to achieve true breakthroughs in the fields of health, food and nutrition, environment and safety.
Although red biotech is the main relevant area within the life sciences and health context, NGI also coordinates (fundamental) research in green (food & agriculture, now directly linked with the Top Institute Green Genetics) and white (industrial) biotech. NGI makes infrastructure tools and expertise in basic technologies (such as bioinformatics, proteomics and metabolomics) through its national technology centers, all these are available to Dutch life sciences research groups.
The Parelsnoer project
Eight academic medical centres work together to set up a nationwide biobank infrastructure to strengthen the Dutch scientific positioning in translational biomedical research. Clinical data, as well as data on genes, proteins, metabolites, and tissue, will be uniformly stored in databases that can use to establish a 'population laboratory' for further clinical research.
This improved infrastructure will be instrumental in validating existing and new therapies, and will help improve the efficiency of the drug development process. All initiatives build on the existing high quality groundwork completed by Dutch scientists in universities and knowledge institutes.
Bundle: CTMM, TI Pharma and BMM
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) combine top research groups with large multinationals and high tech start-ups, in order to develop better therapies.
Improvements in health and healthcare require innovations in Diagnosis, Drugs, and Devices. All three D's are covered by initiatives geared to the 'top institute' concept: The centre of Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) focuses on Diagnosis, TI Pharma focuses on Drugs, and the BioMedical Materials program (BMM) focuses on Devices.
Benefit: Life Sciences & Health
The Life Sciences & Health platform initiative provides the necessary framework of criteria for the use of new knowledge. Bottlenecks that hinder the conversion of knowledge into marketable products are being addressed by:
1 Providing a balanced mix of equity and debt to help ventures bridge the investment gap.
2 Supporting collaboration outside the scope of the PPPs, through conditional grants to joint initiatives and assisting with access to (shared) facilities
3 Improving the Dutch positioning through measures aimed at HR, entrepreneurship, the regulatory climate, communication, marketing, etc.
The 'Build - Bundle - Benefit' framework will help the Netherlands to position itself as a leading player in the life sciences industry and, as well as establishing an investment climate that will be attractive to foreign companies.
