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Pharmaceutical sector backs biotechnology

January 29, 2002

There is a long tradition of pharmaceutics in Germany and foreign trade figures show that the German pharmaceutical industry is successful on an international level. However, there have been large structural shifts in this sector due to the developments in modern biotechnology. With regard to the science intensive drug research there are many indications of a declining competitive position of Germany. This is shown by a study on the influence of biotechnology on the pharmaceutical industry carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe.

The researchers at the Fraunhofer ISI ascertained a decline in the significance of German pharmaceutical research in an international comparison. German companies spend considerably less on research and development than the United States for example. Expenditure here with 19 billion Euro annually is clearly above that in Europe which spends a total of 14 billion Euro on the research and development of new pharmaceuticals - 3 billion of this in Germany. Even though Europe has increased its spending by almost 60 per cent over the last five years, this is not enough to equal the considerable surge in innovation in the US. The rate of increase here amounted to almost 120 per cent.

A further reason for Germany`s falling behind are large variations in the dissemination of modern biotechnological processes in the pharma industry. According to the investigations of the Fraunhofer researchers, the degree of penetration of biotechnology in the pharma sector is clearly below that of the United States. At the end of the nineties 40 per cent of the pharmaceutical patent applications world-wide showed a connection with biotechnology. But whereas the United States are a good 5 per cent above the global average, Germany is around 5 per cent below this.

There have also been remarkable shifts in the company structure of biotechnology-relevant pharmaceutical research in Germany in recent years. The large multinational pharmaceutical companies have obviously forfeited their leading role. Their share in patent applications fell from 65 per cent to 43 per cent during the nineties. They had to relinquish shares to biotechnology companies and so-called scientific inventors. Universities are often concealed behind the other. In the USA the proportion between the large pharmaceutical companies and young biotechnology firms was generally more balanced.

Cooperations are one way for large pharmaceutical companies to secure the necessary know-how and the most recent results of biotechnology-relevant pharma research. This is shown by analyses of researchers at the Fraunhofer ISI of companies` publication behaviour. Whereas the significance of German universities in particular dropped in favour of American institutions, German biotechnology companies are playing an increasingly important role as suppliers of know how. They have since been able to breach the American monopoly position of the nineties. While exclusively American biotechnology companies used to be involved in the publications of German pharmceutical companies, German biotechnology companies now provide the co-authors in 22 per cent of all publications.

FWF Der Wissenschaftsfonds

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