Biotech can revolutionize healthcare, by delivering ground-breaking medicines and treatments to patients, such as AI-driven cardiac sensors to monitor for heart failure, mRNA therapies or monoclonal antibodies to help the immune system to spot harmful cells quickly. It is at the core of pioneering work in gene therapies, personalized medicine and biopharmaceuticals, such as synthetic insulin.
This initiative — BioTechEU — will be part of the EIB Group’s TechEU programme, leveraging support from the InvestEU guarantee and other sources. It builds on the EIB Group’s current life sciences venture debt portfolio of about €3.5 billion across 135 projects, which is recognized for its catalytic impact as well as the EIF’s long-standing commitment to the European venture capital (c. €800m annual investments). The BioTechEU initiative could also lay the foundation for the design of a new EU Health Biotech Investment Pilot, which would attract new private investors and act as a market catalyst.
Olivér Várhelyi, Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, says: “Under-investment is a major stumbling block for Europe’s biotech companies and a serious obstacle for our innovative start-ups. The BioTechEU project should contribute to reversing that trend. It will provide the EU’s biotech sector with financial support grow, so that new treatments can reach the patients.”
Nadia Calviño, President of the European Investment Bank, says: “Europe’s biotech sector is a leader in health innovation and full of talent and ideas. Through BioTechEU, we aim to unlock €10 billion in investment and to ensure that breakthroughs made in Europe can scale and thrive in Europe.”
The European Biotech Act in a nutshell
Key figures:
- The EU biotechnology industry has grown more than twice as fast as the overall EU economy.
- 75% of biotechnology jobs in the EU are in health biotech, totaling 685 000 jobs.
- 21% of the world’s top biotech publications are authored by EU scientists.
- 40% of all medicines sold in the EU are bio-medicines (including biosimilars).
Why a biotech act?
- EU Competitiveness – Enhancing the EU’s ability to compete globally and as a leader in biotech.
- Availability of treatments – Accelerating the development and delivery of groundbreaking treatments.
- Job Creation – Creating thousands of quality jobs and boosting European economies.
- Innovation and Investment – Enabling innovative companies to thrive and drive healthcare and tech breakthroughs.
- Biosecurity – Ensuring clear rules preventing the misuse of biotechnologies.
The European Biotech Act will:
- Accelerate and enable EU-clinical trials authorizations
- Encourage innovation with increased support, one regulatory pathway and regulatory sandboxes
- Support funding, investment and access to capital, in a pilot together with the EIB Group
- Boost bio-manufacturing capacity
- Foster the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health biotechnology
- Enhance EFSA’s capacity to provide scientific advice to companies
- Incentivize human and veterinary biotech medicine with high added value
- Reinforce security by preventing the misuse of biotech and strengthen biodefence
Information sourced from the European Commission press release and factsheet.
Header image by Christian Lue on Unsplash
