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SWITZERLAND
Basel: Life Sciences Hub
Basel has grown to become Europe’s life sciences hub,
home to some of the world’s most successful pharmaceuticals
giants as well as smaller enterprises in the pharmaceuticals,
chemicals and biotechnology industries which
are providing a wide range of products and services.
Basel is the hub of the BioValley region, which now has
over 900 life sciences companies.
Basel’s advantages as a life sciences centre are its
long history of achievement in life sciences; a supportive
business environment; high quality of life;
well-established research and development activities
in life sciences; exceptional human resources; and a
strategic location bordering Germany and France.
The nonprofit BioValley Basel organisation works to
promote the local life sciences sector and to provide
networking opportunities. According to BioValley
Basel, around one in ten employees in the Basel
region is employed in the life sciences sector, whether
as a researcher, technician, lawyer, manager, bus
driver, plant worker, university professor or student.
Around 1,000 to 2,000 new jobs are created in the
local life sciences sector every year, and life sciences
companies in the Basel area achieve a combined
annual turnover of over €75.2 billion.
Global giants Novartis and Roche based in
Basel
One of the prominent leaders in Basel’s life sciences
sector is Novartis, founded and based in Basel and
now the third largest pharmaceuticals company in the
world. Novartis employs 12,000 people in Switzerland
and generates more than 40,000 related jobs, mainly
in the Canton of Basel.
Daniel Vasella, Chairman and CEO, notes that the
Basel area is becoming increasingly important as
a hub for pharmaceuticals research and development.
Novartis opened its state-of-the-art Novartis
Campus in Basel as a means of encouraging further
groundbreaking R&D. The Novartis mission statement
explains, “Novartis is designing our global
headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, as an inspiring
environment that fosters innovation and business
excellence.” In 2008 alone, Novartis boosted its R&D
budget by 12% to reach €5.41 billion, one of the
highest R&D investments relative to sales (over 17%)
in the industry. Novartis was created in 1996 through
the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz; the original
Ciba, Geigy and Sandoz were all founded in Basel.
Roche, founded in Basel in 1896 by young entrepreneur
Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, has grown to become
a multinational pharmaceuticals enterprise known for
the pioneering role it plays in healthcare. An innovator
of products and services for the early detection, prevention,
diagnosis and treatment of many diseases,
Roche’s mission is to create added value in healthcare
by focusing on its expertise in diagnostics and
pharmaceuticals.
Roche is the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics and
in drugs for cancer, transplants and other conditions.
Roche employs over 80,000 people in 150 countries. In
Basel, Roche employs around 1,200 highly skilled professionals
in its Basel Pharma Research Centre, which
focuses its research on the central nervous system as
well as on metabolic and vascular diseases, especially
on type two diabetes, which the World Health Organisation
ranks as one of the most challenging health
problems of the 21st century. The focus of the centre’s
research on the central nervous system is on Alzheimer’s
disease and depression, two diseases which affect
millions of patients. Schizophrenia and anxiety are
additional fields of scientific focus.
Dynamic local players
Basel’s life sciences sector benefits from close ties
between research facilities and business. The University
of Basel’s Life Sciences Training Facility (LSTF) is
dedicated to the study of DNA and RNA at the level
of the entire genome, and for seven years the LSTF
has been providing to the research community access
and training to an Affymetrix platform and related
instrumentation and software. LSTF has recently
implemented the latest Affymetrix GeneChip technology
for genome-wide genotyping (SNP 500K and 6.0
Arrays) and gene expression (Gene-level and Exonlevel
Arrays).
Small and medium-sized companies dominate Basel’s
life sciences sector. As Martin Neff, Head of Economic
Research at Credit Suisse, points out, “The life sciences
sector is firmly in the hands of small and medium-sized
companies. Even though Novartis and Roche together
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