Expertise-driven, public- and private-backed biotech

Expertise-driven, public- and private-backed biotech Throughout history, Norway's fortunes have been tied to the sea. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Vikings left the fjords to explore the world. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Norwegian shipping and fisheries ascended to world rank, hydroelectric power spawned industries and furthered urbanisation, and offshore oil and gas were found and exploited on the continental shelf. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, high-tech has come to the forefront, principally in cities on the long coast.

Biotechnology is both old and new in the country. Its beginnings can be traced to the pioneering work of Michael Sars (1805-1869), a marine biologist who was the first to discover biological organisms at great ocean depths. Starting in the 1980s, new ventures in biotechnology were founded. More than nine in ten of them are spin-offs from research conducted at State universities and governmental research institutes, in many cases with start capital provided by a mix of private venture capital and government agency grants. The sector is young and dynamic. The Norwegian Bioindustry Association was founded in the autumn of 2001, and now has 55 members, of which 35 develop and manufacture products. Of those 35 companies, 16 have established international operations and are described here.

As the biotechnology sector expands, the government remains involved, both to monitor overall national scientific policy and to encourage development through various initiatives. The overall goal is not to compete with larger countries in disciplines across the field, but to exploit the country's strengths in selected sub-sectors, such as functional genomics. In some cases, advantages have accrued from innovative research, while in other instances, they have been more physical: four of the 16 companies described here exploit raw materials inexpensively derived from Norwegian continental waters.

Oslo, capital and centre

Oslo, the capital city at the head of the Oslo Fjord, is the heart of an extensive urbanisation in which a quarter of the country's population lives. The Palace, Parliament and government Ministries are located here, as are the principal industrial and scientific organisations, including The Research Council of Norway. The University of Oslo is the country's largest, with more than 30,000 students. Together with the University, the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science and the Agricultural University of Norway, have extensive programmes in the biosciences. These three institutions recently joined in a 'Triple Alliance' to trigger synergy in research and education. Many of the country's biotechnology companies are located in the greater Oslo area.

Affitech specialises in the technologies for generating and using human antibodies. Its subsidiary, Actigen, develops and markets affinity proteins and tools for research and bioseparation.

Axis-Shield, the result of a merger between Norwegian Axis Biochemicals and Scottish Shield Diagnostics, develops and sells a broad range of medical diagnostic products on the global market. In 2000 the company added point-of-care tests through the acquisition of the diagnostic division of former Nycomed.

Bionor, located at the city of Skien southwest of Oslo, specialises in products for human and veterinarian medicine. Over the past ten years, the company has stepped up HIV-related activities and now offers test kits and Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) services.

Dynal Biotech develops and manufactures magnetic and non-magnetic separation solutions using Ugelstad beads, invented in 1986 at the University in Trondheim. Its products are used worldwide in immunology, molecular biology, microbiology and HLA tissue typing.

FMC Biopolymer uses seaweed as a raw material to prepare ultra-pure grades of alginates and chitosan salts. One of the unique uses of the alginates is as a plug trigger for autodestruct of used disposable syringes, as now required by health laws in many countries.

GenoVision uses polystyrene Ugelstad beads to make products and protocols for isolating DNA and RNA. Its GenoM magnetic bead separators are sold round the world.

Genpoint develops and manufactures diagnostic kits for detection of pathogenic and toxic microorganisms, including the 'Bug'snBeads' kit for isolating bacterial DNA from complex structures.

GenoMar specialises in aquaculture and offers DNA typing services for many fish species, DNA-based breeding services and vaccine prototypes.

Lauras develops immunostimulatory drugs that stimulate and improve the function of the immune system in patients with immunodeficiencies.

PhotoCure is a spinoff of research conducted at The Norwegian Radium Hospital, one of the largest cancer hospitals in northern Europe. The company develops and manufactures therapeutic, diagnostic and medical devices based on its proprietary photodynamic therapy (PDT) technologies. Its most known products are for the treatment of skin cancer.

Sencel is a software house that specialises in a genome search system that affords a six-fold speedup of Smith-Waterman sequence database searches on standard hardware.

Bergen, major port

Bergen, on the west coast at about the same latitude as Oslo, is the country's second most populous city and the port that tourists remember as the gateway to the scenic fjords. The city also is a hub of marine research and aquaculture. The University of Bergen is the country's second largest; its Sars International Centre conducts research in marine molecular biology, as does The Institute of Marine Research, a branch of the Ministry of Fisheries. Two leading biotechnology companies, both in aquaculture, are located in the city.

Biosense uses fish and shellfish as raw materials to produce antibodies and antibody-based kit systems for environmental monitoring of marine resources.

Intervet Norbio specialises in fish health products, including fish vaccines, endocrine products and disinfectants.

Stavanger, oil capital

Stavanger, on the southwest coast, was once known worldwide for its sardines. Since the late 1960s, it has been the centre for the offshore oil and gas field operations in the North Sea, and many foreign oil companies have offices in the city. It's principal biotechnology company is an industrial-scale operation.

Norferm takes methane from the gas fields in the North Sea and ferments it to make bioproteins. Its plant at Tjeldbergodden is the first of its sort in the world and has an annual capacity of 10,000 tons of bioprotein that are used in the food, feed and industrial markets, as well as downstream products such as immune stimulators and growth promoters.

Trondheim, history and technology

Trondheim, on the south side of the Trondheims Fjord at 63°N, grew up around the Nidaros Cathedral, built there starting in the eleventh century, on the grave of St. Olav, the King who Christianised Norway. In science, modern Trondheim is most known for The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the country's centre for technological education.

SINTEF, a commercial R&D laboratory spunoff from NTNU in 1950, now is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia, with eight research institutes and four research companies. SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture conducts research in the biosciences.

TromsØ, farthest north

TromsØ, on a sheltered island north of the Arctic Circle at about 69°N, is a base for arctic research and for fisheries operating in arctic waters. The University of TromsØ is the world's northernmost academic institution and the first in Norway to take up modern methods in molecular biology in the late 1970s.

Biotec Pharmacon develops enzymes for use as research tools. In one product, shrimp industry processing water is the raw material for a highly purified enzyme that is one of the world's most sold DNA modifying enzymes. The company also has developed several immune-modulating products based on yeast beta-glucan.

Resources and initiatives:

thematically focused, nationally oriented Biobanks and health registries are now being co-ordinated with population surveys to provide bioinformation unique both in scope, as Norway has registries not found in other countries, and in extent: some hospital biobanks have stored information from four or five generations of patients. The country also has comprehensive biobanks for cattle, pigs and salmon.

The Salmon Genome Project, under the aegis of The Research Council of Norway, aims to build the tools and resources for expanding knowledge of the Atlantic salmon, vital in aquaculture. The project includes expanding the existing genetic map, sequencing ESTs, studying the genome organisation in greater detail, and constructing a BAC library as well as performing QTL and expression studies.

The Biomarine Forum brings public and private sector organisations together with the common aim of furthering enterprises in marine technologies, biotechnology, pharmacy and ancillary equipment, to be located at Fornebu, formerly the site of the old Oslo Airport.

The Norwegian Microarray Consortium, a joint effort of research communities in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, is building a complete infrastructure for DNA microarray-based technology. It already offers inexpensive, high-quality human-, rat- and mouse-cDNA microarrays to research laboratories throughout the country.

FUGE, the national plan for research in functional genomics put together by the unified, multidisciplinary research community, callsfor boosting biotechnology research and for co-ordinating restructuring of the research establishment as a whole. Eight sectors have been chosen for their potential of triggering viable ventures: bioinformatics, microarrays, proteomics, structural analysis, molecular imaging, model organisms and biobanks/health surveys.

Medcoast Scandinavia, new this year, is a joint initiative of the academic institutions in Oslo and the University and Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Its aims are to promote research, innovation and commercialisation in biomedicine and to trigger synergy between FUGE and SWEGENE, the consortium for functional genomics in south-western Sweden.

CONNECT is an initiative that aims to nurture the creation, development and growth of technology enterprises. The basic concept was hatched in 1985 at the University of California at San Diego, and CONNECT has since spread to many other countries. In Norway, a CONNECT network was first set up in Bergen, and a national umbrella organisation, CONNECT NORWAY, was founded in 2001.