Heidelberg, 23.09.2021. Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann stopped by today in Heidelberg with Franziska Brantner, member of German Parliament and Min. Theresia Bauer to discuss with the local biotech industry in our cluster.
"The pandemic has not only highlighted how crucial health and healthcare are. It also showed us, using the example of new types of vaccines, how crucial the role of medical innovations is.
Today, Baden-Württemberg is already Germany's leading location for the healthcare industry. This creates great opportunities and potential for innovation: In the Rhine-Neckar region, for example, we can see in the BioRN Cluster that biotechnology is making huge progress - and we can see how important it is to link up the relevant stakeholders. We will continue to strengthen this pillar of our prosperity by further interlocking the cooperation of health and life sciences together with university medicine and the healthcare industry and by keeping our healthcare companies competitive on international markets. We are making Baden-Württemberg the healthcare location of the future: innovative, digital and resilient.” said Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann today.
Gitte Neubauer (Chair of BioRN Executive Board and Head of Cellzome) welcomed the Minister-President at Cellzome premises. “It is a great honour to share our excitement of the science we do at Cellzome to get new medicines to the right patients – in collaboration with our partners in this vibrant life science community.” so Gitte during her visit to the newly established building.
This was also the occasion for a round-table discussion with regional biotechnology and life-science leaders from industry and academia: Jürgen Bauer – EMBLEM & BioRN Scientific Board, Michael Boutros - German Cancer Research Center and BioRN Executive Board, Jürgen Gamer – Apogenix & BioRN Strategic Board, Claus Kremoser – WM Therapeutics and BioRN Executive Board, Andreas Schmidt - Proteona, Barbara Stegmann - Living Brain and Wolfgang Wick - German Cancer Research Center.
"The Rhine-Neckar region is a leader in biotechnology. This brings good jobs and helps us to defeat diseases such as cancer, diabetes and other metabolic diseases. For this, however, we need a federal government that invests properly in cutting-edge research, specifically promotes European networking and start-ups so that we can secure our technological sovereignty and stay ahead of the global competition." Commented Franziska Brantner, member of German Parliament.
“Heidelberg and the Rhine-Neckar region have enormous potential in the life sciences and health fields. This is the basis for innovative start-ups, companies and excellent scientific institutions to work and do their research. The state aims to push these start-ups, innovations and cutting-edge research - and in truly big ways. Today's exchange with entrepreneurs and scientists has given us important and exciting input towards this goal.” said Theresia Bauer, Minister of Science, Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg.
As regional cluster management, BioRN is supporting different initiatives to leverage the unique combination of global pharma and leading academic institutions to boost the creation of start-ups and their development and to further strengthen the biotech Mittelstand. “The recently established Evotec’s BRIDGE beLAB2122 is an ad-hoc instrument to accelerate pre-clinical academic projects and the upcoming BioLabs-Heidelberg provides start-ups with a perfectly managed environment in which they can grow fast.” Julia Schaft, BioRN Managing Director.
Pictures: Florian Freundt
About BioRN
BioRN is the science and industry cluster of the Rhine-Main-Neckar region around Heidelberg, one of Germany’s strongest biotech hubs. It is a non-profit network fostering health innovations and serving its members by creating a rich translational ecosystem as well as promoting, representing, and connecting the regional innovation stakeholders. Our vision is to develop the region into a world-leading life science cluster attracting international investments and top global talent.
BioRN has about 130 institutional members, including the top academic and research institutions, 10 global pharmaceutical companies, a large range of small and medium-sized enterprises bolstering the life science ecosystem as well as local government organizations and interest groups. www.biorn.org.
Media contacts
Dr. Annalisa Zuccotti
BioRN Cluster Management GmbH
Communication & Events Lead
P: 49 6221 4305-113