Company:

Cincinnati USA Partnership

Title (Circulation):

WirtschaftsWoche (190,500)

Issue/Date: 17/09

Pages: 7

Biomedicine Exodus of Ideas URL: http://www.wiwo.de/technik/exodus-der-ideen-394249/

While Germany bans the cultivation of genetically modified corn and deters scientists, the U.S. government sponsors biomedicine with many billions from the economic stimulus package. Germany is threatened by a brain drain, migration of ideas, and patent loss.

When Susanne Wells came to Cincinnati, Ohio, seven years ago, she wanted to find out what happens in a human cell that turns into a cancer cell. “All I did at the time was basic research”, says the molecular biolo-gist from Bavaria. But the opportunities she was offered at the Cincinnnati Children’s Hospital changed her perspective. The 41-year old became an application researcher. Every day, she meets the children suffering from a rare disease called Fanconi anemia whom she wants to help by developing the right cure. As she puts it, “I can hardly imagine a better place for research.”

No wonder: The German is working at one of the largest research-oriented children’s hospitals in the United States. Already now, the hospital, which belongs to the University of Cincinnati, receives more than 100 million dollars every year from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, for research alone. An additional 131 million research dollars are contributed by private sponsors. But it’s even getting better: Since the change in government in the U.S., biotech research has become even more popular and receives more promotion than ever before - in order to maintain its position among the world’s best. Fatal for Germany

The attraction felt by German researchers will be disastrous. While the U.S. and many of its European neighbors promote this future-oriented industry and lower taxes for biotech companies, exactly the opposite is happening in Germany: Here, Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner bans genetically modified corn. And the corporate tax reform adopted in 2007 additionally strangles the young industry. Spokesmen are warning: If nothing happens, Germany is threatened by a sellout of researchers, companies, and ideas.

This would be fatal for Germany, because biotechnology is the cross-sectional technology of the future. No matter whether it’s the production of drugs or food, the development of clean energies, fuels, detergent en-zymes or technical surfaces - there is hardly any area in which biotechnology would not play a role. Almost 500 companies in Germany are already active in the biotechnology business, and 91 more are pure biotech firms. The industry employs almost 30,000 people.

“Penalty tax for research and innovation”

But now biotech researchers are pessimistic. Frustrated as they are, they recently published an open letter to Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, Secretary of the Treasury Peer Steinbrück and Secretary of Commerce Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. It was signed by 63 biotech-financial experts. Their plea: “Have the greatness and flexibility to withdraw those parts of the corporate tax reform that are detrimental to our business.”

The act was a deterrent to investors because losses can no longer be carried forward, critics say, and equaled a “penalty tax for research and innovation”. It is quite doubtful whether this letter will gain a hearing: “Only very few German politicians actually understand the way in which this future-oriented industry works”, says biotech insider Friedrich von Bohlen.

It is true that many investments are made in basic research in Germany, and subsidies are granted to spin-offs and high-tech clusters. But when it comes to stabilizing the industry by granting it tax reductions, as in the UK, France and various U.S. states, the ministries disagree.

“Unfortunately, we have never had a research chancellor, but only automobile chancellors all the time”, complains Wolfgang Söhngen, the President of Paion (Aachen), a company working on painkillers and an-esthetic drugs. Maintaining an automotive industry with enormous excess capacities reminded Söhngen of the disastrous coal subsidies granted in North Rhine-Westfalia. “If only half of that money had been spent on future technologies, Germany would be much better off today.”

In fact, spirits have hardly ever been so low in the German biotech scene. Even Peer Schatz is frustrated. The boss of Qiagen, the biggest, most profitable and most successful German biotech company with 3000 employees and annual sales totaling US$ 893 million, was convinced that he and his company for many years pioneered the German biotech industry. And he was right. Today, Qiagen is the world market leader in the field of sample and assay technologies for genetic analyses. Just like Hoover stands for vacuum cleaners and Kleenex for paper handkerchiefs, researchers use the name of Qiagen as a synonym of laboratory sets used to isolate and clean the genetic material from organisms and cells.

But Schatz doesn’t have a good word to say about Germany at the moment. When asked, whether and when the Qiagen headquarters will return to Germany, he is irritated. “We definitely will not come to Germany - and if we are going to move at all, we will rather transfer to the U.S.”, he says. On the occasion of its listing at the Nasdaq high-tech stock exchange in 1996, Qiagen relocated its headquarters to Venlo (Netherlands) for legal reasons. What Schatz appreciates about the U.S.: “We are on much better terms with the U.S. ministries than with the German ones.”

Schatz expresses exactly what many German biotechnologists feel. They enviously watch the spirit of optimism in the U.S. “Now we’ve finally got a President who is interested in research and promotes it”, says Arnold Strauss, research director at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Under George Bush’s rule, the world still looked quite differently. Bush had banned promotion of embryonic stem cells, and his interest in biomedical research was limited to bio-terrorist attacks, at maximum.

10 billion dollars from Obama

Barack Obama, the new U.S. President, wants to massively promote biotech. More than ten billion dollars from his nation-wide program to promote economic recovery have been reserved for the NIH alone. The NIH is some kind of redistribution system for the government money, and it is the main source of subsidies for biomedicine already today. With Obama’s financial assistance, the NIH budget will increase by 25 percent in a single year. And the stem cell researchers can also heave a sigh of relief, because Obama lifted all bans imposed by his predecessor a couple of weeks ago.

“The situation for biotech research is better than it has ever been”, says “Arni” Strauss, “and we will take our chance.”

The billions in research funds can be used to set up new research projects and to hire more scientists - whom Americans preferably seek in Europe - and most preferably in Germany where researchers are excellently educated. Strauss has already gathered a number of German researchers at his clinic. From his point of view, this group may certainly grow. Nevertheless, Strauss is but one out of countless U.S. research managers hunting for good heads these days.

In Germany, Strauss & Co. will probably find what they’re looking for. Hardly ever have researchers complained so loudly about their situation. The decision on GM corn is just another reason that will cause some of them to pack their bags. The recent ban excellently fits “German traditions”: Since the first genetically modified soy beans were shipped from America to Germany in the fall of 1996, local consumers have defended themselves against the genetic food.

Even though most consumers will probably welcome the decision of the conservative minister - the remaining German plant biotechnologists fear for their existence. In December 2008, the company

Novoplant (Gatersleben) already had to file for bankruptcy. And in Potsdam, 100 people have just been laid off by Bayer ScropScience.

Green Genetic Engineering faces difficulties in Germany

In fact, most of the plant biotechnology companies and many excellent plant geneticists left Germany many years ago. And Green Genetic Engineering is not the only discipline that was critically eyed and thwarted by politicians until scientists and entrepreneurs left the country in droves, taking their ideas and products with them, or sold the patents abroad. Genetic therapy and stem cell research were massively affected by this trend at least for some time.

The most recent flop: Tom Tuschl, one of the joint inventors of the RNA interference technology, was supposed to be attracted away from the U.S. to the Free University (FU) of Berlin. The RNA interference technology, which was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2006, can be used to indirectly silence genes. Thus, it may be possible in the near future to cure diseases including cancer or AIDS (WirtschaftsWoche 34/2008). Tuschl co-founded Alnylam, Inc., in the U.S., a company working on therapies for liver cancer and excessive blood cholesterol levels.

Berlin will wait in vain for the top researcher. In late February, the 42-year-old declined the offer. The reason: Since he was offered the professorship, Tuschl had to follow good old university traditions and fight hard with a twelve-member FU committee for every single pipette tip and every position for researchers, post-graduates, technical staff or dish-washers. This was a “bunch of monkeys not getting anything done“, Tuschl judged. “I thought they wanted me.” And then he no longer wanted to come: “If I cannot carry through my research projects, why should I agree to come?”

The top talent’s refusal revealed a typical German problem: Academic structures in our country are outdated and inflexible in many respects. In addition, many professors still consider strong ties between science and business an obscene relationship.

Americans are ahead of Germany

Americans have an entirely different view of things. Therefore, Susanne Wells can simply turn to the University’s Drug Discovery Center whenever she needs an active ingredient to cure her Fanconi anemia children. There, the search for actives works in the same manner as in a pharmaceutical company. In fact, the collection of potential cures that is now being researched for a substance that helps the children was developed by industry. When consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, which is headquartered in Cincinnati, closed its pharmaceuticals division, it donated its actives library containing almost 400,000 substances to the University.

This is of enormous help to Ms. Wells. “Here, I cannot only research the foundations of Fanconi anemia at the University, but at the same time I can develop a cure for the children that would otherwise die very young”, the molecular biologists adds. “Something like this would still be inconceivable at a German university hospital.”

Susanne Kutter 23.04.2009