The chairman of BioRegionUlm, Dr. Nikolaus Rentschler, head of the Laupheim-based family enterprise of the same name, put the win into its wider context: “The region’s biopharmacy and biopharmaceutical technology offer huge opportunities for the diagnosis and therapy of serious illnesses. The accumulation of all the power and resources in this regional cluster greatly increase the chances of success.”

The cluster will be strengthened by a total of €600,000 in funding for a period of three years. Two thirds of the funds come from the EU and from the state of Baden-Württemberg; BioRegionUlm will provide the remaining third. The goal of the cluster is to bring the partners of the Ulm region closer together, to support collaborative work and to identify and use synergies to boost the development of new products and services across different disciplines and sectors as well as to increase the location marketing on a national and international level.

The biopharmacy cluster including companies such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Rentschler, Vetter and Merckle Biotec will focus on three concrete objectives: first, the cluster plans to develop new biotechnological production methods and improve existing ones with the aim of making drug production cheaper and more efficient. Second, diagnostics and therapy solutions for personalised medicine will be jointly developed, applied and implemented on the basis of biotechnology. The third goal is the identification and application of new key technologies such as stem cell research, nanomedicine and nanobiotechnology in the health industry.

Over the last ten years, the Ulm/Upper Swabian region cluster has undergone dynamic development and is now the European leader in the production of biotechnological drugs. In order to make its mark on the growing health market of the future, experts stress the importance of stepping up the collaboration between the biotechnology, pharmacy, diagnostics and medical technology sectors. The BioRegionUlm will use the newly acquired funds to focus on these efforts.