Home-grown production talent 

When an opportunity opened up for Senior Process Technician Asad Edman to learn what it was like to work at a lab at Anocca in 2021, he jumped at it. At the time, he had concluded his high school diploma and was looking for ways to enter the job market – what he found was Anocca’s Biostart programme.

“The first thing you need to have in order to succeed in this job is focus,” Asad Edman says. “I’ve been trained in-house and I didn’t have any prior education in biology or any previous ATMP [Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products] training. But if you have focus and good learning skills, you can be trained and do a good job.”

A challenge

Anocca is one of several life science companies now residing in former AstraZeneca facilities in Södertälje, south of Stockholm. The company is creating a pipeline of precision T-cell immunotherapies, with a focus on engineering TCR T-cell therapies for untreatable cancers, and carries out both research and development as well as manufacturing. Anocca relies on a diversity of skills and experience for roles across its organization. When it comes to recruiting entry-level laboratory technicians in the biotechnology space, however, the company found there was a dearth of talent with suitable training and job expectations. 

There is no place to go shopping for process technicians with ATMP competence.

“It’s been challenging that most people we hire come straight out of the universities with Master and PhD degrees – that’s the profile we needed for the first eight years of operations,” Anocca’s Chief Operating Officer Viktor Arnkil muses, looking back on the company’s development since it was established in 2014. 

“But now we need process technicians, as we started production a couple of years ago, and there is no place to go shopping for process technicians with ATMP competence. The people we have in these roles are either researchers or people like Asad who we have trained ourselves in-house,” he says.

Bring in young, new talent

The Biostart education program was launched to provide driven and motivated individuals with basic technical laboratory training and assess their potential to join the company. Anocca has run the program twice so far – with a third round in the offing – in collaboration with Telge Tillväxt, Södertälje municipality, and the adult education center Hagabergs Folkhögskola. Nine program alumni have gone on to employment at Anocca, which has around 120 members of staff in total.

Both Asad Edman and Viktor Anrkil speak warmly of Anocca’s approach to bringing in young, new, talented people without scientific backgrounds to cover the manpower gap in production jobs in the life science industry.

“Annocca’s approach to in-house training has been great – they dug into the community, brought some people onboard, and found out what they were capable of,” Edman says. “It’s a good opportunity for people in the community. It’s nice they’re getting a job that they never considered before. Most people think that in order to land a job in biotech, they need a huge amount of education, and years of study, but that doesn’t have to be the case.”

It’s not just good for the community, it’s also great for the companies that gain skilled and dedicated staff that are trained in-house.

“Just look around, there are a lot of places with a lot of people, such as high schools or other work areas. If the companies that need more staff open an opportunity – via a program or even a small project – they can fish out a lot of people from unexpected places. It’s not just good for the community, it’s also great for the companies that gain skilled and dedicated staff that are trained in-house,” Edman says.

Focus and effort

When Asad Edman joined the Biostart program, the main part of his training took a month and the entire introduction period of three months combined training and work, after which he was offered a contract with the company.

“Currently, I’m working on production of engineered T cells for T cell therapies for cancer. My days can be quite different – sometimes it’s ongoing production in the lab in different teams, but we’re only allowed to stay in the lab for a certain amount of hours at a time. When we’re not in the lab, or if there’s a pause in production, then we work at our desks on improving our procedures,” he explains.

“The company’s production is quite new and we are developing this area of the business. So we work a lot on our procedures to find ways to simplify and improve them in order to make our jobs, our protocols, and our SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures] clearer,” he adds.

Both inside and outside the company, there is a lot of new technology emerging that we need to be aware of and stay updated on.

Reflecting on the challenges that he encounters in his job, Edman mentions the rapid developments in the field.

“It’s a constant learning process. It’s not the kind of job where we’re getting trained and educated and then we’re set,” he says, and continues: “We need to learn and process information on a daily basis. That requires a lot of focus and a lot of effort. Both inside and outside the company, there is a lot of new technology emerging that we need to be aware of and stay updated on.”

When asked what he enjoys most about his job, Asad Edman smiles. Anocca has recently filed a clinical trial application for its first product – a drug candidate for pancreatic cancer – which is intended to go into the first in-human clinical trials next year. 

“I am excited that we are actually putting something good into the world. When we’ve succeeded with all the procedures and we can treat a patient, it will be a wonderful day. I am looking forward to that day,” he concludes.