€200K to promote collaboration between engineers and biotech in BioRegio cluster

BioRegio STERN Management GmbH has won the second competition for strengthening regional clusters in Baden-Württemberg, under which the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs will provide up to €200,000 for the “Engineering - Life Sciences – Automation” (ELSA) cluster initiative, which aim to bring together the life sciences and engineer-driven industries, over the next two years.

BioRegio STERN Management is a skills-sharing network that provides support and media services to the biotechnology and life science companies in the cities of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Esslingen and Reutlingen and the Stuttgart and Neckar-Alb regions.

The aim of the ELSA cluster initiative is to link existing life sciences clusters with those from technology and engineer-driven sectors including automation technology, mechanical engineering and automotive supplies.

Both industries have already formed clusters in the Stuttgart and Neckar-Alb regions. BioRegio STERN Management will initiate and promote the creation of collaborative agreements in these sectors in conjunction with the Göppingen-based Kompetenznetzwerk Mechatronik. and Medical Valley Hechingen competence networks as well as Stuttgart’s Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation. “This start-up financing for our new cluster initiative will help us bring the sectors closer together, for example by organising events to identify common ground and open up new areas of business and sales potential,” said Klaus Eichenberg, Managing Director of BioRegio STERN.

Product developers from the automotive industry and biotech/medtech companies are already undertaking joint development work on new high-tech products in the region. High-throughput processes employing automation technology are already in use for drug screening. There is also demand for automation in cell culture to test drug candidates and for safety testing of food and cosmetics ingredients.

Know-how is in demand not just for developing biotech and medtech products such as cell therapies and personalised medicines, but also for manufacturing them. Small batches or one-off production, as has until now been standard at many small biotech start-ups, are no longer viable for those companies looking to successfully establish themselves on the market in the long term. Quality standards such as GMP guidelines and DIN/ISO standards also need to be complied with and this can generally be assured by using automated processes.