Biotechnology Clusters in the U.K.:Lessons from Localisation in the Commercialisation of Science

Philip Cooke

 

ABSTRACT.

Today, U.S. biotechnology firms dominate the growing therapeutics and diagnostics sectors despite most of the key discoveries being made by European, and especially U.K. scientists. Lessons have been learned about the economic importance of commercialisation of bioscience. Within Europe, the U.K. is the leading challenger of U.S. hegemony in biotechnology exploitation. Knowledge-driven clusters of start-ups and established smaller and medium-sized businesses have developed in Cambridge and Oxford along with nascent agglomerations in Surrey and Scotland. They are responsible for the turnaround. As in the U.S., intimate links with large pharmaceutical firms and publicly-funded research centres are key to spin-out businesses, suggesting a generic “new economy” model. The specific problem at present is scale and the need to make up ten years lost ground. But the evidence is there that the U.K. is taking up the competitive challenge.

 

1. Introduction

To analyse the gap between U.S. cluster formation in biotechnology and that in the U.K., as well as the firm formation which constitutes the clustering phenomenon, we can see how much U.S. spin-out biotechnology products dominate world markets (Swann and Prevezer, 1996; Prevezer, 1999). Even large pharmaceutical firms are less innovative than the “entrepreneurial” sector (Ernst & Young, 1999) in this regard, and this is doubly true for European “big pharma”. The slight advantage to Germany over the U.K. was that in 1998 it at least had Boehringer Mannheim’s (now Roche, of Switzerland) Reteplase cardiac drug on the market. Contrariwise it is hard to find a single U.K.-originated product derived from recombinant or genetically modified organisms or cells, despite the presence of 53 distinct products on the U.K. market. Even Glaxo’s successful Epivir (HIV) product which is in the world top ten selling drugs was developed by Montreal-based BioChem Pharma. It can be seen that basically no U.K. pharmaceutical firms even market biotechnological products in the U.K., that no U.K.- originated biotechnological drugs are on sale in the U.K. and that, at the end of 1999, the U.K. market was completely foreign-dominated. The key question addressed is whether this position (replicated now also in Germany) is likely to be changed in the near future.

6. Concluding remarksThis paper began with a commentary on how dependent big pharma has become upon significantly smaller technology-driven start-up and spin-off firms. This was demonstrated in detailed analyses of biotechnologically-derived therapeutic treatments manufactured, marketed or distributed by the multinational pharmaceutical companies. Whichever way diverse data sources are analysed, big pharma is overwhelmingly dependent for drug-origination upon independent, lesser-scale, biotechnology firms. Of course, the latter are dependent on the former to at least as great an extent for the large cash-investments required to test and trial potential products over lengthy time periods and at high risk. Big pharma is cash-rich enough to continue this asymmetrical power game for as long as biotechnology firms fail to make the scale breakthrough to become fully integrated pharmaceutical companies or FIPCOs. This kind of relationship of double, but asymmetrical, dependence is probably unique in the business world, though it has a resonance with the way the IT industry operated in its earlier days, when electronics multinationals quarried Silicon Valley for technologically sophisticated start-ups. By the end of the millennium, of course, some of the bright start-ups of the 1970s and 1980s had themselves outgrown or displaced the larger predators, as the histories of Microsoft and Intel exemplify. The paper is unable to say that a comparable process of independent, technologyfocused firm growth from start-up to market leader will happen in biotechnology as it has, to a growing extent, in IT. This is not ruled out, but what can be stated with confidence is that the model of venture capital-driven, start-up and spinout growth, usually in business clusters, has nowspread from the U.S. to Europe, particularly in the U.K., and that, if anything, big pharma shows less signs of being at the research cutting-edge of biotechnology in the era of the human genome than it did in the days of monoclonal antibodies and recombitant DNA. Moreover, a first case of biotechnology acquiring pharmaceuticals occurred with the Chiroscience-Celltech purchase of Medeva in November 1999 in the U.K. There has also been some equalisation of the technological lead in product commercialisation between the U.S. and Europe as the climate for academic entrepreneurship has improved in the latter.There are even some signs in the U.S. that the biotechnology firm formation rate has declined with merger and acquisition practices among biotechnology specialist firms. This may signify a new stage in the industry’s slower evolution towards a less bifurcated structure than hitherto. Peak years for new firms in Massachusetts, for example, were 1991–1993, with annual start-up rates of 15, 21 and 15. Between 1996 and 1998 seven Massachusetts firms merged or were acquired by others (Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, 1998). Alternatively, it may be a lull before the storm of potential new firm formation associated with functional genomics as genesequencing, bioinformatics and a host of other commercial applications of human genome science are explored. More of this kind of activity is likely to occur in the U.K. as well as elsewhere in Europe, than happened in the first wave of biotechnology application growth in the 1980s when key discoveries remained unpatented in U.K. laboratories, leaving U.S. technologists a clear field for early adoption and application. Despite its European lead in biotechnology product potential the U.K. is, in 1999, as dependent on the U.S. for biotechnological therapeutic products, marketed and distributed by big pharma in the U.K., as Germany. However, U.K. independent biotechnology firms dominate the European pipeline for future biopharmaceutical products, and many of these involve alliances with U.K. pharmaceutical firms. Cantab Pharmaceutical’s vaccine partnerships with Glaxo and SKB, Powderject’s with Glaxo, and Peptide Therapeutics with SKB are illustrative of this tendency. But U.K. alliances with non-U.K. pharma, like Cambridge Antibody Technology’s with Eli Lilly, Chiroscience’s with ScheringPlough, Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca, and Scotia Holdings with Boehringer Ingelheim are noteworthy and show that the levelling-up between U.S. and European entrepreneurial firms is now a reality in prospect rather than mere hype. The final inference to be drawn from this analysis of global-local power dependencies and asymmetries is two-pronged. First, “strength-innumbers” characterises the practices of the small firm ecosystem defining the originators of potential biopharmaceutical products and platform technologies. The cluster is the definitive organizational mode of the creative community of firms that risk oblivion to pursue discovery and commercialisation. Investment is tight, so situations that can lower transaction costs or remove them via trustful exchange, reputational trading and collective learning in localised knowledge networks is of key importance. And the prospects of long-term profit continue to attract the complementary business, legal and financial services companies into the cluster alongside the research laboratories, incubators and start-up firms. This is an “extended campus” milieu rather than the “extended workbench” metaphor applied to clusters in more traditional industries such as those of northern and central Italy. But this also highlights the second feature of the “triple-helix” relationship between industry, university and government (Etkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1997), which is that big pharma and the entrepreneurial biotechnology firms are inordinately dependent also upon the public purse. For example, some $770 million of public research funding flows through the Boston biotechnology community per year, and it is at least $1 billion each in San Francisco and San Diego. The U.S. biotechnology funding agencies had at their disposal $20 billion of public money in 1999, more than twice as much as the business R&D budget of $9 billion. This is by no means only an innovation process involving venture capital, management support and start-ups to transfer research results from laboratory to market. It is fundamentally fuelled by public research budgets. Estimates of the value of the market at $70 billion in 2000 give an indication of the public: market value ratio. Keep in mind also that U.K. government annual expenditure on bioscience research is some £1 billion andGermany’s a further $1 billion if the large public element in biotechnology venture capital is included, and we see something of the scale of modern public investment in this industry of the future (Cooke, 1999; DTI, 1999a). In conclusion, the globalisation of bioscience and its commercialisation in biotechnology is a study in variable geometry between multinationals and entrepreneurial start-ups, competition and collaboration, public subsidy and private profitability, or as some might also say, the devil and the deep blue sea.

초록
오늘날, 대부분의 핵심적인 발견들이 유럽, 특히 영국 과학자들에 의해 이루어졌음에도 불구하고, 미국의 생명공학 회사들은 성장하고 있는 치료와 진단 분야를 지배하고 있다. 생물 과학의 상업화의 경제적 중요성에 대한 교훈이 있다. 유럽 내에서 영국은 생명공학 개발 분야에서 미국의 패권에 대한 주요 도전자이다. 지식 중심의 스타트업 및 설립된 중소기업 클러스터는 서리와 스코틀랜드의 초기 집적과 함께 캠브리지와 옥스퍼드에서 발전했다. 그들은 그 전환에 책임이 있다. 미국과 마찬가지로 대형 제약사 및 공적자금이 지원되는 연구소와의 긴밀한 연계가 사업 분사의 핵심으로, 일반적인 '신경제' 모델을 제시한다. 현재의 구체적인 문제는 규모와 잃어버린 10년을 만회해야 할 필요성이다. 하지만 그 증거는 영국이 경쟁적인 도전을 하고 있다는 것입니다.

1. 소개
클러스터링 현상을 구성하는 확고한 형성뿐만 아니라 미국의 생명공학 클러스터 형성과 영국의 클러스터 형성 간의 차이를 분석하기 위해 미국의 스핀아웃 생명공학 제품이 세계 시장을 얼마나 지배하고 있는지를 알 수 있다(Swann and Prevezer, 1996; Prevezer, 1999). 이런 점에서 대형 제약회사도 '기업가적' 부문(Ernst & Young, 1999)보다 혁신성이 떨어지며, 이는 유럽의 '대형 제약회사'에 대해서는 두 배로 사실이다. 독일이 영국에 비해 약간 유리한 점은 1998년에 적어도 뵈링거 만하임(현재의 스위스 로슈)의 레테플라제 심장약이 시판되었다는 것이다. 반대로 영국 시장에 53개의 다른 제품이 있음에도 불구하고 재조합 또는 유전자 변형 유기체 또는 세포에서 파생된 단일 영국 유래 제품을 찾기는 어렵다. 글락소의 성공적인 에피비르(HIV) 제품은 세계 10대 판매 의약품으로 몬트리올에 본사를 둔 바이오켐파마가 개발했다. 기본적으로 어떤 영국 제약회사도 영국에서 바이오테크놀로지 제품을 판매하지 않으며, 영국에서 유래한 바이오테크놀로지 약품도 판매하지 않으며, 1999년 말에는 영국 시장이 완전히 외국인이 지배하고 있다는 것을 알 수 있습니다. 다루어진 핵심 질문은 (현재 독일에서도 복제된) 이 입장이 가까운 미래에 바뀔 가능성이 있느냐 하는 것이다.

6. 마무리 발언
이 논문은 대형 제약회사가 상당히 작은 기술 중심의 스타트업 및 분사 기업에 얼마나 의존하게 되었는지에 대한 논평으로 시작했다. 이는 다국적 제약회사가 제조, 판매 또는 유통하는 생명공학적으로 파생된 치료제에 대한 상세한 분석에서 입증되었다. 다양한 데이터 소스를 분석하는 방법이 무엇이든 간에, 대형 제약회사는 독립적이고 규모가 작은 생명공학 회사에 약물을 공급하는 데 압도적으로 의존한다. 물론 후자는 장기적이고 고위험에 걸쳐 잠재적인 제품을 시험하고 시험하는 데 필요한 대규모 현금 투자에 대해 적어도 상당 부분 전자에 의존한다. 빅파마는 생명공학 회사들이 완전히 통합된 제약 회사나 FIPCO가 되기 위한 규모의 돌파구를 마련하지 못하는 한 이러한 비대칭 파워 게임을 계속할 수 있을 만큼 충분히 현금이 풍부하다. 이러한 이중적이지만 비대칭적인 의존 관계는 전자 다국적 기업들이 기술적으로 정교한 스타트업을 위해 실리콘 밸리를 개척했던 초창기의 IT 산업 운영 방식과 공명을 갖고 있지만 비즈니스 세계에서는 아마도 독특할 것이다. 물론, 2000년 말까지, 1970년대와 1980년대의 몇몇 똑똑한 스타트업들은 마이크로소프트와 인텔의 역사가 예시하는 것처럼 스스로 성장하거나 더 큰 포식자들을 대체했다. 이 논문은 IT 분야에서 성장하고 있는 것과 마찬가지로 신생 기업에서 시장 선두 기업으로 기술 중심의 독립적인 확고한 성장 과정이 바이오 기술에서도 일어날 것이라고 말할 수 없습니다. 이것도 배제할 수는 없지만, 자신 있게 말할 수 있는 것은 보통 비즈니스 클러스터에서 벤처 캐피털이 주도하는 창업과 스핀아웃 성장 모델이 이제 미국에서 유럽으로, 특히 영국으로 퍼져 나갔다는 것이다, 빅파마는 인간 게놈 시대에 생명공학의 최첨단에 있는 연구의 흔적을 단클론 항체와 재결합 DNA의 시대에 비해 덜 보여준다. 게다가 1999년 11월 영국에서 카이로사이언스-셀텍이 메데바를 인수하면서 생명공학이 의약품을 취득한 첫 사례가 발생했다. 또한 미국과 유럽 간의 제품 상용화에서 기술적 리드의 일부 균등화는 학술 기업가정신을 위한 환경이 후자에서 개선됨에 따라 이루어졌다.미국 내에서는 생명공학 전문기업들의 인수합병(M&A)으로 생명공학기업 형성률이 하락했다는 징후까지 나타나고 있다. 이것은 지금까지보다 덜 분열된 구조를 향한 산업의 느린 진화의 새로운 단계를 의미할 수도 있다. 예를 들어, 매사추세츠의 새로운 기업들의 피크 연도는 1991-1993년이었고, 연간 창업률은 15, 21, 15였다. 1996년과 1998년 사이에 7개의 매사추세츠 회사가 합병하거나 다른 회사에 인수되었다(Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, 1998). 또는 유전자 배열, 생물정보학 및 인간 게놈 과학의 다른 상업적 응용 분야가 탐구됨에 따라 기능적 유전체학과 관련된 잠재적인 새로운 기업 형성의 폭풍이 일어나기 전에 잠시 소강상태일 수 있다. 이러한 종류의 활동은 1980년대 영국의 연구소에서 핵심적인 발견들이 특허를 받지 못한 채로 남아있던 첫 번째 생명공학 응용 성장의 물결에서 일어난 것보다 영국과 유럽의 다른 곳에서 더 많이 일어날 가능성이 높으며, 미국의 기술자들은 조기 채택과 적용을 위한 명확한 분야를 남겨두었다. 생명공학 제품 잠재력에서 유럽이 앞서고 있음에도 불구하고 영국은 1999년에 독일처럼 영국의 대형 제약회사가 판매하고 유통하는 생명공학 치료 제품을 미국에 의존하고 있다. 그러나, 영국의 독립적인 생명공학 회사들은 미래의 바이오 의약품을 위한 유럽 파이프라인을 지배하고 있으며, 이들 중 많은 것들은 영국 제약 회사들과의 제휴를 포함한다. 칸타브제약이 글락소·SKB와 백신 제휴를 맺고, 파우더프로젝트와 글락소, 펩타이드 테라퓨틱스가 SKB와 제휴를 맺은 것이 이 같은 경향을 잘 보여준다. 그러나 케임브리지 항체기술과 일라이 릴리, 쉐링플라우, 브리스톨 마이어스 스퀴브와 아스트라제네카, 스코샤 홀딩스와 보에링거 인겔하임과 같은 비영국계 제약회사와의 연합은 주목할 만하며 미국과 미국 간의 수준 향상을 보여준다. 그리고 유럽의 기업가적 기업들은 이제 단순한 과대 광고가 아닌 전망의 현실이 되었다. 전역-국소 전력 의존성과 비대칭성에 대한 이 분석에서 도출해야 할 최종 추론은 두 갈래다. 첫째, "강력한 숫자"는 잠재적인 바이오 의약품 및 플랫폼 기술의 창시자를 정의하는 중소기업 생태계의 관행을 특징짓는다. 클러스터는 발견과 상업화를 추구하기 위해 망각을 감수하는 기업들의 창조적 커뮤니티의 결정적인 조직 모드이다. 투자가 빠듯하기 때문에 현지화된 지식 네트워크에서 신뢰할 수 있는 교환, 평판 거래 및 집단 학습을 통해 거래 비용을 낮추거나 제거할 수 있는 상황이 중요합니다. 그리고 장기적인 수익 전망은 연구소, 인큐베이터 및 신생 기업과 함께 보완적인 비즈니스, 법률 및 금융 서비스 회사를 계속해서 클러스터로 끌어들인다. 이것은 이탈리아 북부와 중부와 같은 더 전통적인 산업의 클러스터에 적용되는 "확장된 작업대" 은유가 아닌 "확장된 캠퍼스" 환경이다. 그러나 이것은 또한 산업, 대학 및 정부 간의 "트리플 헬릭스" 관계의 두 번째 특징을 강조합니다(Etkowitz and Lydesdorff, 1997). 이는 대형 제약회사와 기업가용 바이오테크놀로지 기업이 공공 자금에도 과도하게 의존하고 있다는 것입니다. 예를 들어, 매년 약 7억 7천만 달러의 공공 연구 자금이 보스턴 생명공학계를 통해 흘러가고 있으며, 샌프란시스코와 샌디에고에서는 각각 최소 10억 달러이다. 미국의 생명공학 자금 지원 기관들은 1999년에 사업 R&D 예산인 90억 달러의 두 배가 넘는 200억 달러의 공적 자금을 마음대로 사용했다. 이는 연구 성과를 실험실에서 시장으로 이전하기 위해 벤처캐피털, 경영지원, 창업 등이 참여하는 혁신 과정일 뿐 결코 아니다. 그것은 근본적으로 공공 연구 예산에 의해 추진된다. 2000년에 시장 가치가 700억 달러로 추정되는 것은 대중에게 시장 가치 비율이라는 지표를 제공한다. 또한 생명과학 연구에 대한 영국 정부의 연간 지출은 약 10억 파운드이고, 생명공학 벤처 자본의 큰 공공 요소를 포함하면 독일은 추가로 10억 달러이며, 우리는 미래의 이 산업에 대한 현대 공공 투자의 규모를 어느 정도 볼 수 있다(쿡, 1999; DTI, 1999a). 결론적으로, 생명과학의 세계화와 생명공학의 상업화는 다국적 기업과 기업가적 스타트업 간의 가변적 기하학, 경쟁과 협력, 공공 보조금 및 민간 수익성, 또는 일부 사람들이 말할 수 있듯이 악마와 깊은 푸른 바다에 대한 연구이다.