T. WESTBERG
The presidential portrait gallery in the faculty club of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden's renowned medical university, features rows of distinguished gentlemen posing in dim surroundings and with stern and cheerless expressions. All, that is, except one. The most recent portrait is of Hans Wigzell, smiling mischievously as he enjoys a fine day's fishing in the splendid Swedish countryside.
Wigzell is the charismatic former president of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He's a non-conformist, and a critic of 'corporate science'. But he is no socialist dreamer, nor is he against industry and entrepreneurship. On the contrary, he champions the translation of biomedical research into tools and products for the commercial market. But that commercialization shouldn't compromise scientists' freedom and creativity, he says. This is the challenge of a region whose science and scientists have started to become more business savvy.
V. MEHTONEN
Harriet Wallberg Henriksson is the first female president of the Karolinska Institute.
Wigzell now chairs a company in Stockholm called Karolinska Development — an initiative that guides scientists through the entrepreneurial world by providing all kinds of support, from legal advice to access to seed money for spinning off an invention. Wigzell is keen that the development process remains in the control of those who know the science best, for as long as possible. Scientific curiosity, rather than the prospect of making big money, should drive innovation, he says. "Recognizing early business opportunities is a vital issue in the life sciences," he explains. "But science is an art; it won't thrive if there's a financial controller looking over your shoulder all the time."
Karolinska Development, and similar initiatives set up by the universities and biotech industry in nearby Uppsala, aim to promote the sector in the Stockholm–Uppsala region, which is home to more than half of Sweden's 260 or so biotech companies. The sparsely populated country hosts Europe's fourth-largest biotech industry, and the Stockholm–Uppsala region is one of the continent's largest and most innovative biotech clusters after Cambridge and Paris.
The Karolinska Institute, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Stockholm University and Uppsala University provide a healthy academic environment for the various commercial activities that are refilling the pharmaceutical industry's pipeline as large companies buy up or license the ideas of innovative smaller companies. "Big pharma can't perform the basic research any more," says Harriet Wallberg Henriksson, president of the Karolinska Institute. "They need to have access to all the small start-up companies as a source for future products."
Data mine
Swedes generally have detailed medical records and don't mind sharing information about their health and lifestyle, so Sweden is a fertile ground for biomedical research. The Karolinska Institute, for example, hosts the world's largest twin registry, with health records for 86,000 pairs of twins collected since the early 1960s. The data provide a unique biobank for studying the role of lifestyle, the environment and genetics in disease. And starting in 2010, the LifeGene biobank project will start to enrol 500,000 people to study diseases and everyday health problems. These data are so attractive to researchers worldwide that the Karolinska Institute receives one of the largest shares of money given by the US National Institutes of Health to non-US institutes.
T. THÖRNLUND; T. WESTBERG; ORASIS FOTO
Stockholm (bottom right) and Uppsala are flagship regions in Sweden's efforts to boost its reputation for scientific endeavour.
Sweden spends around 4% of its gross domestic product on research and development, making it the second-highest spender worldwide. Public funding has stagnated in the past few years, but Sweden's centre-right government, elected last September, has promised to reinforce support for the sector. The capital region has also recently created the cross-institutional Stockholm Brain Institute, and is planning a Life Sciences Laboratory modelled after the successful European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and a possible cancer institute in Uppsala. Moreover, a 
500-million (US$680-million) investment is planned to transform a disused railway area in Stockholm into an ultramodern 'science city', with a broad range of services for both academia and business.
A measure called the Swedish Teachers' Exemption, which allows researchers to own the intellectual-property rights for their inventions, is likely to affect how these facilities will generate intellectual property. Some say that it gives inventors the incentive to look after their ideas in the early phases; others contend that inventions tend to lie idle for too long because researchers have to raise the patenting costs themselves.
Scientists are often not business savvy, and this is where Karolinska Development and similar initiatives step in. "We only knew how to do science in the academic world," says Mona Ståhle, a dermatologist at the Karolinska Institute who co-founded the biotech firm LipoPeptide, which develops products to facilitate wound healing and tissue regeneration. "The guys at Karolinska Development helped us to structure our ideas into a business model," she says. "They knew the right people and they know all the regulations, formulations and tricks it takes to spin off an idea." Stepping into business was time-consuming, she says, but the experience has been fruitful for her research and for the way she runs her lab. Much more emphasis is now put on documenting every step and checking that experiments can be reproduced, for example.
Calculated risks
Other start-up entrepreneurs have had similar experiences, and many have found it difficult to attract investment. Venture capitalists have become more cautious, says Leif Kirsebom, whose Uppsala-based company, Bioimics, develops antibiotics. Rather than just a concept, many now demand ideas that are further along in development.
Björn Ekström says the Stockholm–Uppsala region has much to offer science entrepreneurs.
"Getting the US$10,000 or so that you need to get started can be damn hard," agrees Tore Bengtsson, a cell physiologist at Stockholm University who helped set up Glucox Biotech, which focuses on drugs for type II diabetes and insulin resistance. But as in the United States and the rest of Europe, academia's aversion to business is waning. "When I started in 1998 everybody was sort of against you," he says. "Now everyone just says 'go, go, go'."
Life sciences has become an important sector for Sweden's economy. In Uppsala, every tenth job is in biotech, with some 7,500 employees and an annual turnover of US$1.4 billion. But the highly competitive industry forces small firms to search for niches, says Ulf Pettersson, vice-rector of the University of Uppsala. He cites Uppsala-based Q-Med as an example. Founded in 1987 and running in its present form since 1995, the company develops and markets medical implants such as antiwrinkle products. It is now worth millions of dollars.
The region was hit hard five years ago when Pharmacia, a large Swedish drug company, merged with Pfizer, then disappeared from Sweden altogether. Pharmacia had been a real attractor for the region and when it moved, lots of competent people were left behind — which is not altogether a bad thing. Many former managers have since taken up work at smaller enterprises in the region.
But there is still a bridge to be built, says Kirsebom. "If we could get more of these people back into the academic system, and update them on the science, they could be a great help in setting up commercial projects at an early stage."
"Going from nowhere to a position where you have something to offer is difficult," says Björn Ekström, a former research manager with Pharmacia, who in 2004 became co-founder and chief executive of Uppsala Science Park's Olink Bioscience. But the Stockholm–Uppsala region now has plenty to offer the ambitious scientist-turned-businessman. "Being in this region means it is easy to find a role model."