Anti-Aging Drugs, Super Plants, Long Term Blood Bank Are Developed at Halle-Leipzig BioRegion

In recent years, development of new drugs has been the exclusive province of the major commercial drug companies’ own research and development laboratories, with occasional assistance from university research programs and public support.

No more.

In Germany as in the United States, the explosion of new discoveries in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology has led major drug companies to withdraw from R&D and hand over more of the responsibility of pursuing new products to thousands of small startup companies. These startups are capable of conducting research to develop new drug treatments, often in partnership with the drug companies, on a broader scale and at reduced financial risk to the drug companies.

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant, has invested over $2 billion in joint ventures with biotech companies since 1997. Schering, the therapeutics and diagnostics giant, is investing well over $100 million this year alone in startup biotech companies.

Nowhere is this process of joint ventures and development agreements between drug companies and tiny startups better seen than at in the Halle-Leipzig biotech cluster. The region already has a remarkable record of scientific achievement (artificial fiber, the sugar substitute Saccharin and color film all were first developed here). But the “Bioregion,” as it is now called, between Leipzig in Saxony and Halle in Saxony-Anhalt is becoming one of Germany’s hottest biotech centers.

The focus of activity is in three areas of technology situated in three nearby towns: pharmaceutical drug development (Halle), plant biotechnology (Quedinburg) and tissue engineering (Leipzig).

Dr. Uwe Schrader, CEO of the public-private BioRegion Halle-Leipzig Management GmbH (www.bioregion-halle-leipzig.de), says his company provides vital incubator lab and office space to biotech startups at the BioCenter in Halle, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Entrepreneurs can secure low cost five-year leases for space at the BioCenter facility or at the Technology and Founder Center at the nearby Martin-Luther University in Halle, as well as at several other research institutes. The management company also encourages networking with other firms to create important synergies that can assist start up companies to find venture capital sources, secure business partners, such as major pharmaceutical firms, and to obtain needed government approvals.

Below are brief profiles of five of the young biotech companies that make up BioRegion Halle-Leipzig:

probiodrug mbH(Gesellschaft für Arzneimittelforschung mbH) aims at identifying and developing a new class of drugs that modulate the activity of highly specific peptides that are involved in causing the following human diseases:

• Diabetes
• Dementia
• Obesity
• Immune Disease

CEO Dr. Hans-Ulrich Demuth says that the company has developed classes of compounds that interact with target proteins, all of which are in some way involved in the aging process. Company scientists have identified certain proteins that appear to cause a host of age-dependent and inflammatory diseases.

Dr. Demuth says that these proteins can trigger a series of reactions in the body, or chain of events he describes as “regulational cascades,” that can lead to such seemingly unrelated diseases as diabetes and dementia.

Founded in 1997 by Dr. Demuth and Dr. Konrad Glund, probiodrug mbH now employs nearly 50 people. The company is already making plans to move out of its incubator space at the BioCenter in Halle into its own facility to be built across the street on a site that was once a part of a Russian military base. Among other successes, the company has developed inhibitor enzymes to certain peptide hormones that can lead to Type 2 diabetes.

In December 2000, probiodrug signed a licensing agreement that gives pharmaceutical giant Merck & Company. Inc. certain exclusive worldwide rights to probiodrug’s proprietary dipeptidyl peptidase “four” (DP IV) inhibitors.

“We are pleased to enter into this agreement with probiodrug on a promising new avenue of research," said Dr. Bennett Shapiro, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Licensing and External Research at Merck Research Laboratories.

“An aggressive new focus on external collaborations, like this one with probiodrug, is bringing the best science to Merck and broadening our future new product base”.

Type 2 diabetes -- the most common form of diabetes -- affects about 7-9% of the world population. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 15 million persons are affected. It occurs most often in people over age 45, and the prevalence is increasing. Left untreated, it can lead to serious health complications, including blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and limb amputation. Diabetes is estimated to cost $98 billion in direct U.S. health care costs annually.

For further information, see www.probiodrug.de.

Scil Proteins GmbH is developing therapeutic recombinant proteins. Therapeutic proteins are active substances that play an essential role in the development of new active substances. Today, these human proteins are primarily produced in very cost-intensive mammal cell cultures (recombinant production).

A considerably more economical means is to produce them in microorganisms. Using new production methods of this type would make it possible to drastically reduce the price of many therapeutic agents. By lowering costs, these therapeutic agents may then also be used for other applications as well.

Recombinant proteins can be used in the development of protein pharmaceuticals against various illnesses. Recombinant proteins can strengthen, for example, the immune system, to promote the formation of blood cells as growth factors, as well as regenerate diseased or destroyed tissue. Moreover, human recombinant proteins as therapeutic agents tend to cause fewer toxic side effects and can be produced rapidly.

For further information, see www.scilproteins.com.

ICON Genetics GmbH was formed in 1999 by companies located in Princeton NJ, Munich and Halle in Germany. According to the company web site, the company focuses on solving the problem of transgene management in the post genomics era of agricultural biotechnology and to bring the speed and efficiency of crop engineering up to that of gene discovery.

Icon Genetics' Transgene Operating Systems are a suite of technologies that allow for rapid, efficient and precise transgene introduction, integration, and movement into a crop/variety of interest. These technologies include DNA encoded instructions specifying gene recombination, gene transformation methods, and plant hybridization techniques. Company executives believe that, genomics, the science of rapid gene sequencing and determination of gene function, will provide a rapidly increasing number of novel and useful genes for engineering crop plants.

Customized technology will soon become essential for managing these transgenes -- to include inserting, removing and tracking genes through research and development programs -- it will also become necessary to quickly introduce transgenes into commercial lines.

For further information, see www.icongenetics.com.

Sungene GmbH & Co. is a subsidiary of the chemical giant BASF and is focused on developing new therapies based on analysis of recombinant proteins in plants. The company is engaged in the discovery and development of genetic traits that render plants, such as rapeseed, potatoes and tomatoes, more resistant to pathogens and of higher value for human and animal nutrition and health.

For further information, see www.sungene.de

VITA 34 (Gesellschaft für Zelltransplantate mbH) has established a unique blood bank that can preserve blood for long periods of time.

This new method enables parents to preserve the valuable umbilical cord blood of their child following birth. In effect, the system extracts one’s own stem cells to make possible the exact duplication of one’s blood. These blood samples are stored for a lifetime in liquid oxygen in cryogenic tanks at temperatures of –196 degrees Celsius. If blood should ever be needed in a future medical emergency or transplant therapy, blood can be replicated from the samples.

For further information, see www.cord-blood.de (in German only).—