European Commission Launches Biotech and Biomanufacturing Hub
- 31/01/2025
- News
On 30 January 2025, the European Commission (Commission) launched a Biotech and Biomanufacturing Hub that will help start-ups and small firms to bring innovative biotechnology-based products to market (see, attached press release). The hub is one of the measures which the Commission envisaged when it published its Communication on biotechnology and biomanufacturing in March 2024 and will direct entrepreneurs to critical information in a range of areas including:
- EU funding;
- Research infrastructure;
- Networks, pilot and testing facilities and market insights;
- Intellectual property;
- Regulatory framework.
Not coincidentally, the Commission published a day earlier its Competitiveness Compass, a roadmap for pursuing the three “transformational imperatives” of the 2024 Draghi report on EU competitiveness: innovation, decarbonisation and security (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News & Insights of 10 September 2024). In the pharmaceutical arena, the Competitiveness Compass earmarks the life sciences sector as a pillar for innovation for which it will spell out a strategy in the second quarter of 2025. Additionally, biotechnology and the manufacturing of critical medicines should form the subject of close coordination between the EU and member states. This is because the dependency on third countries for the preparation of active ingredients for critical medicines should be reduced. All of this will be addressed in a Critical Medicines Act which was tentatively promised to be unveiled as early as 11 March 2025.