arGEN-X advances a third therapeutic antibody program into preclinical development: http://t.co/hBB8aUOQ
posted 1 day ago
Flanders & Brussels is home to about 147 life sciences companies with biotech activities. In total, they employ more than 13,000 people. The biotech sector ranks 3rd for R&D investments in Flanders.
Flanders and Brussels comprises 13,500 km2 but houses about 147 companies with biotech activities (124 have R&D activities). In these life sciences companies, over 13,000 employees are active. 69 companies are related to health care (=red biotech), 15 companies have agricultural (=green biotech) and 25 companies have industrial biotech activities (=white biotech) and about 38 companies are biotech providers. For Flanders only, we count in total 124 life sciences companies with biotech activities: 56 red, 15 green, 19 white and 34 biotech providers.
The growing life sciences hubs near the 5 main universities house most biotech companies on some 13 research parks and 14 incubators, research institutes, academis hospitals and clinical research organisations. Biotech companies have access to more than 500.000 sq.ft of highly flexible infrastructure.
The total turnover of the life sciences sector is about €1.9 billion. The private and governmental investments in biotech R&D amount to respectively €550 million and €270 million in 2007. On top of that, 6 Flemish biotech IPO’s have raised €310 million in total since 2005. These figures illustrate that life sciences is a booming business in Flanders.
IWT is a 1 counter stop for non-refundable subsidies for life sciences R&D. IWT invested €100 million in life sciences in 2008.
Flemisch biotech companies enter into big deals: e.g. Ablynx with Boehringer (potential valie of € 1.325 billion and Galapagos with J&J and GSK (potential value of >€1 billion).
Additionally, there is an advanced tax payment reduction (up to 75%) in place on the wages of researchers.
