Spurring Biotech Innovation Across the Globe: A High-Level Discussion

Oxbridge, Boston, Bern, London, New York, and Silicon Valley. The world’s biotechnology hubs are well known and attract a significant proportion of venture capital funding, pharmaceutical company interest, and public financing in the biopharma industry. Public policy plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining these hubs, which means government strategies are a feature of the biotech business landscape that cannot be ignored.

This panel gathered senior government officials and diplomats representing Estonia, France, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). With a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate post-pandemic periods, the panelists explained how their biotech sectors had fared, and the government support implemented to encourage innovation. In France, for example, the startup digital health application Doctolib was highlighted as a pandemic-era success story. At the same time, in the UAE, their commitment to reducing red tape around COVID vaccine development and testing helped produce a region-leading immunization program.

While local contexts varied, the policies that proved helpful in spurring innovation were similar. For example, national health databases and digital health programs proved useful for empowering biotech advances in Estonia, France, and the UAE. Public financial investment – whether in the form of domestic salary support for biotechs during the pandemic or regional research grants at the European Union level – helped drive innovation in Estonia and France. Taxation policies, including incentives for research and development, helped drive innovation in France and the UAE.

Amin Al Amiri, Undersecretary of Health Regulation in the UAE, explained that if governments prioritize the biotech sector, enormous steps can be taken rapidly. Whether approving vaccines within hours of overseas approvals from the FDA or EMA or committing funding to expensive but essential local clinical trials, if governments provide an environment where biopharma firms can bloom, the evidence suggests that they will.