The opening remarks included a speech by Ebba Busch, Sweden’s Minister for Energy, Business and Industry and Deputy Prime Minister. Busch highlighted among other things the importance of Sweden’s life science industry, nationally and internationally, and the importance of the global industry players to meet, collaborate, and innovate in arenas such as this one.

Ebba Busch, Sweden’s Minister for Energy, Business and Industry
Related article

BIO-Europe 2024: Spotlight on Stockholm

The capital of Sweden possesses not only world-renowned academic research and high profile life science companies, it is also home to many of the country’s most important national life science efforts and leading centers.

BIO-Europe has come to town

Also on stage at the opening session was Claire Macht, Portfolio Director of EBD Group Europe. She gave the audience a summary of the event’s long history and progress. And indeed, just as the life science industry has, the event has also had an accelerated development. From around 95 visitors in 1995, to 5,500 this year!

This becomes very obvious when you enter the exhibition hall at Stockholmsmässan in Älvsjö just outside Stockholm city: Circus BIO-Europe has definitely come to town. More than 30,000 one-to-one meetings was scheduled stated the organizers, and the atmosphere was vibrant and buzzing with life science energy.

In between company presentations and interesting sessions, you could walk (a lot!) around the different exhibitors, sit down for a while at a break and breath-session, throw some balls in a basket, or just enjoy a coffee together with a potential collaborator.

Interview: Scantox

The CRO Scantox, headquartered in Ejby, Denmark, has around 450 employees and offices in Denmark, Sweden, Austria and the UK. Olivia Merinder, Business Development Director, is part of Scantox Sweden, based in Solna, Stockholm. We asked Olivia about her company and about her impressions of BIO-Europe.

What are Scantox’s current business priorities?

“We’re currently building up our client base. Scantox has expanded a lot since 2020, since then we’ve grown from 50 people with a focus on regulatory toxicology in Denmark, and now we’re roughly 450 people. We have acquired six sites around Europe in order to expand our portfolio, to not only provide services like regulatory toxicology but also genetic toxicology, discovery services, bioanalysis and CDMO services.

“We’re here at BIO-Europe to find new clients and to show our expanded portfolio to our existing and new clients, and to show how we can help them with their drug development.”

What’s the market sentiment among your clients?

“Right now, everybody is looking for money. Everybody is very interested in going further in their projects but their main priority right now is finding investors. At least on the Scandinavian market there is a slight lack of funding and I don’t know if that’s because there’s less money or if there’s more competition. Business is a bit slower than it was last year.” 

We do attend other toxicology conferences, but going to BIO-Europe and focus on meeting small and medium sized enterprises helps us build our client base.

How important is BIO-Europe to you?

“BIO-Europe is very important for our business development and showing what we can do in addition to our toxicology services. Even though the name Scantox sounds like it’s just toxicology, we do a lot more than that. We do attend other toxicology conferences, but going to BIO-Europe and focus on meeting small and medium sized enterprises helps us build our client base. And also helps us find new clients that are in a phase where they need our help. We’re also looking at what drug development companies are doing and what the market is heading towards, and trying – from our companies perspective – to develop our business in that direction.” 

What are your impressions from BIO-Europe?

“I’m having a good time. I’ve met a lot of people I’ve already know, and there are a lot of Swedish people here, and I’ve had a lot of very good meetings. I’ve had plenty of partnering meeting and all of them have been very good and very helpful.” 

Lesson learned from a serial entrepreneur

The Bio-Europe 2024 program took the visitors on a journey of the past 30 years of partnerships, deals and innovation and envisioned the next 30 years to come. The first session was followed by an interview on stage with our Swedish life science serial entrepreneur, Mathias Uhlén, professor at KTH and KI, founder of the Human Protein Atlas (highlighted in our latest issue), and involved in 30 (!) startups.

He provided for example statistics of significant value created in Swedish life sciences since 2010: Total value created has been USD 70 billion – 84% coming from the Stockholm-Uppsala region.

Mathias Uhlén, professor, KTH and KI

Uhlén also shared his experience from founding life science companies. Lessons learned included “there is no magical formula” (each journey is unique), “no venture funding without a clear milestone-driven plan”, “aim to be number one in a niche” (avoid being second best), and “it is important to be strategic AND opportunistic”.

On the agenda: Sustainability

After the interview with Mathias Uhlén, there was a session highlighting the importance of sustainability in the pharma industry. Panelists were Magnus Björsne, CEO, AstraZeneca BioVentureHub, Malin Parkler, CEO, Pfizer Sweden, and Lauri Lehtovuori, CEO, Combient Foundry. The three of them discussed what is being done within the pharma industry to become more energy efficient and climate smart, for example by reducing their carbon footprint.

Take home-messages were that the industry cannot only improve themselves (all of us, the entire society, must), the industry could take more responsibility when collaborating with external partners, for example logistics partners, to not only buy but collaborate and do this work together, and last but not least, innovate and together with green tech/tech companies come up with better solutions for the entire pharma supply chain.

Panelists discussing sustainability

Interview: Faron Pharmaceuticals

Faron Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in Finland and the United States, with a focus on developing bexmarilimab, a first-in-class, humanized antibody that binds the Clever-1 target on myeloid cells and macrophages. The company has 27 employees. Faron was a part of the Finnish pavilion at BIO-Europe 2024, organized by Business Finland, and we asked Yrjö Wichmann, Chief Financial Officer at Faron Pharmaceuticals, about his impressions of the event.

Why are you attending BIO-Europe?

“We are here with a dual task, one is business development because we’re at a stage where we’re considering licensing our drug to big pharma, so that’s the main focus. But we’re also here to meet investors. This is a better conference for business development than for investments though, there aren’t many investors present – especially for us as we’re a listed company. We’re a bit too mature for venture capital investors.” 

Is it important for you/your company to attend BIO-Europe?

“Yes and it’s good that we have several people from the company here, because we have a lot of meetings that are conflicting. Faron has been attending BIO-Europe for a number of years.” 

Have you observed any current Nordic life science trends?

“There is an increased interest into the Nordic market as such, from outside the Nordics. There is also great science in all of the Nordic countries. However, we’re at different stages, in Finland we don’t have an industry in the same manner as in Sweden and Denmark, but it’s growing and we’re seeing a lot of interesting companies coming out of Finland. So, the whole market in the Nordics is quite interesting from an investor perspective. The problem in Europe is that we still live in silos, so we have a French silo, an Italian silo, a Benelux silo, a UK silo, we have a Nordic silo, and these don’t interact with each other. In the US it’s better because it’s one big market. It’s more easy to find investors and projects on a larger market, rather than in these smaller national silos.”

We’re a part of the life science ecosystem in Finland and it is important that it grows and that it is visible, so it is definitely important to be here.

You’re part of the Finnish pavilion, does that help in making international connections?

“It’s good to have a base/a booth where you can agree to meet people. At the same time, the meeting arrangement feature in the conference app is very effective so you don’t necessarily need a booth either. It’s good to be a part of this. We’re a part of the life science ecosystem in Finland and it is important that it grows and that it is visible, so it’s definitely important.” 

What are your impressions from the conference?

“Relatively good. A tighter programme would have been better, but that’s also my fault, we’re too small as a company to attract a lot of meeting invites. We also didn’t approve all of the meeting requests we got, because there’s a huge amount of service providers and we’re not currently in the process of hiring service providers. These conferences tend to become more and more service provider heavy, which is a natural development but not the best for us.”

Women in Life Sciences

During lunchtime, there was a very interesting discussion at the exhibition hall stage on the topic raising the ceiling for women. Christina Lloyd, Chairwomen, VILDA Sverige, Chelsea Ranger, founder and chair, WiLD Norway, Lene Gerlach, founder and chair, WiLD Denmark, and Markus Dietrich, Senior Investment Associate, Hadean Ventures, discussed how more women can be both attracted to and included in leadership roles, and also how they felt about having mandates.

Related article

Momentum Building for Women in Life Science Across the Nordics

With the formation of WiLD Norway, Norway becomes the third of the five Nordic countries to launch an organization dedicated to empowering women in life science. Following the footsteps of Women in Life Science Denmark (WILD) and VILDA in Sweden, something big is brewing across the region, drawing global attention from the life science industry. But why here, and why now? To find out, Nordic Life Science Magazine headed to Oslo to speak with the team behind WiLD Norway.

Money, money, money

Another interesting, and well-attended, session focused on the very hot topic of financing. Lars Gredsted, Lundbeckfonden, Laura Lane, Lilly Ventures, Karl Naegler, Sofinnova Partners, Mårten Steen, HealthCap and Nick Williams, Medicxi, discussed challenges, opportunities and differences between the US and Europe.

They summarized the session by sharing a piece of advice to companies looking to find an investor. In short, take home messages were embrace the feedback you are receiving and make changes accordingly and network-network-network – do not be afraid to ask for advice, and perhaps you will find your next business parter or investor at BIO-Europe next.

Related article

How to pitch to life science VCs

Nordic life science companies are generally of good quality, but can often be better at pitching compared to US-based companies and entrepreneurs. Effective pitching is a skill, and is centered on good storytelling to get an investor’s full attention and buy-in. Since I work for the life science VC, HealthCap, I thought I would share […]