News

27.07.2009

Celonic goes north - together with LifeTecAachen-Jülich and AGIT
After being quite successful in the acquisition of federal grants in 2008, Celonic still has the right touch. Last year, federal secretary Thomas Rachel handed the approval for two scientific projects. Nowadays, Celonic belongs to a consortium that applied for a project in cluster internationalization led by LifeTecAachen-Jülich.

“OPTEX and FORSYS have major significance for us as a contract manufacturing organization in terms of reaching a leading market position. They help us to gain a real competitive edge in R&D”, explains Dr. Andreas Herrmann, CEO of Celonic. OPTEX is a BioChancePlus project that aims to generate a CHO cell line showing high cell density. Within OPTEX, Celonic co-operates with Bielefeld University. Furthermore, Celonic belongs to a successful consortium on “A systems biology approach for predictive cancer therapy” in the frame of the FORSYS call launched by the German Ministry of Education and Research. As one out of ten partners, Celonic develops protein biopharmaceuticals which are manufactured and tested in terms of efficacy.

Now, the cluster LifeTecAachen-Jülich goes north: Aim of the project is building bridges towards the internationally renowned Medicon Valley. Medicon Valley stretches across Eastern Denmark with Copenhagen as the capital to Southern Sweden (Lund area). In this geographic cluster, more than 1000 life sciences companies are located, many of them in pharmaceutical biotechnology which is Celonic’s primary clientele. “On the one hand, we want to build a network. Furthmore, companies and academic institutions shall generate their direct profit”, says Andreas Herrmann. Amongst other activities, a delegation business trip is planned. Members of LifeTecAachen-Jülich are invited to join. Celonic will definitely participate. Next to LifeTecAachen-Jülich, the regional development agency AGIT is engaged in the project. “Medicon Valley has a number of approaches which might be implementable in our region”, Dr. Ute Schelhaas, project manager at AGIT, explains with special regard to the support of company foundings and young enterprises. Her colleague Dr. Claudia Mourran, managing director of LifeTecAachen-Jülich, adds: “While constantly aiming for cross-border scientific projects, we are often restricted to national or European funding rules. I can imagine that Medicon Valley has found innovative ways to stimulate and finance high level projects across the border.”

The project will last for 6 months. In total, the German ministry of education and research has chosen 12 clusters between Oldenburg and Bayern to implement their internationalization strategies. Even for the German ministry, this initiative is a novelty.




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