Ontology engineering

news© 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.company eligible “for a bigger pot of money”on meeting certain milestones.Another example is the €2 ($2.9) billion fundavailable to SMEs until 2013 through the Risk-Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF) set up by theEC and the European Investment Bank. This is agreat idea in principle, but the eligibility criteriatend to rule out biotech SMEs. To apply, companiesmust be profitable, which many biotechs arenot for several years as they plough their moneyinto R&D. “For biotech SMEs, the RSFF criterianeed to be changed,” says Dirk Carrez, directorof Industrial Biotech at EuropaBio.Others would like to see the LuxembourgbasedEuropean Investment Bank (EIB) andEuropean Investment Fund (EIF) take boldersteps to support fledgling biopharma enterprises.Flexible loans and other financing instrumentsfor companies close to self-sufficiencyare currently made available by EIB and EIF,typically for late-stage co-investments of over€20–30 ($29–43) million a year. “We’d like tosee a bigger share of that funding going to lifescience companies,” says Chantelot, who suggeststhe EC draw up a new mandate to give thesector priority in funding.Chantelot is also keen for big pharma toexpand its corporate venture capital programsfor early stage SMEs—a trend already underway(Nat. Biotechnol. 27, 403– 404, 2009). Publicfunds could help offset the risk, he adds. “Forlate-stage biotech companies in partnershipwith big pharma, EIB could lend or co-investsome money to minimize the risk for the otherparties.”A key issue is determining whether the lackof capital currently stifling many companiesreflects a problem with the financial instrumentscurrently administered by the EIB and EIF ora problem with the companies themselves. Inother words, are deserving companies being letdown by the current system, or should thesecompanies not be receiving funding at all as theyare unlikely to become sustainable enterprises?“The EC is looking carefully at this question,”says Giulia Del Brenna, head of the EC unit oncompetitiveness in the pharmaceuticals industryand biotechnology, speaking in a nonofficialcapacity.European officials are also consideringanother option, and that is to set up a EuropeanBiopharmaceutical Innovation Fund specificallydedicated to biotech startups. VCs arguethat this could indeed be useful, particularly forearly stage companies at risk, but stress the needfor the fund to be administered with the samedue diligence and market considerations thattypically constrain private financing.Some VCs disagreed with the DTI report’sconclusions that capital supply was part of theproblem. “Capital is available in EU, but it’s beenBox 1 Recommendations for European biotechThe report commissioned by the EC (Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry) fromThe Danish Technological Institute is entitled The Financing of BiopharmaceuticalDevelopment in Europe (http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/biotechnology/documents/index_en.htm). It provides several suggestions for increasing the access companies haveto capital:• The EC should undertake an in-depth analysis of the effects of different tech transfermodels used within and outside Europe (good practice) to improve the effectivenessof biopharmaceutical R&D and commercialization and ensure that the sector iscompetitive and able to attract private funding.• Early stage investments should be encouraged to ensure that innovative companiescontinue their development activities, perhaps by supporting micro-funds andinvestments by business angels in early stage biopharmaceutical companies throughpublic co-investments and tax incentives.• Establish a European Biopharmaceutical Innovation Fund focused on investingin biotech companies while considering the geographical reach of the existingfunding mechanisms at European and national levels to ensure that global fundingopportunities are exploited.• Improve the framework conditions for both biopharmaceutical companies and theventure capital industry in Europe.kept dry,” says NGN’s Cerina. “While in bettertimes most companies would have found a safeharbor, now there are too many companiesthat are not compelling enough chasing limitedcapital resources, and only the best oneswill find investors.” Michiel de Haan, a VC andgeneral partner of Aescap Venture Management,Amsterdam, agrees. “Out of 100 various proposalswe look at we only invest in one or two. It’sa very strong selection process, and that doesn’tmake us popular. But for high-quality propositionsthere is healthy competition and enoughVCs around to invest.”Despite their reservations, VCs would stillwelcome moves to make investing in biotechSMEs more attractive, such as tax breaks andother forms of risk sharing with public investments.Programs that help companies withsubsidies, guaranteed loans, and technologyand innovation loans on which interest is paidback according to the success of the productwork very well, says de Haan, who cites France’stax-credit system and Holland’s TechnologyStart-Up Programme (a specialized seed fund),as illustrative examples. Indeed, de Haan arguesthat there’s a need to “look at those countriesNew product approvalsActemra (tocilizumab)Genentech(S. San Francisco,California)where these types of financial instruments arevery good for the biotech startup, and learn fromthem.”One other recommendation from the DTIreport is to improve the quality of new venturepropositions through better technology transferfrom universities. For Marja Marakow, currentlythe chief executive of the European ScienceFoundation and former vice president of theUniversity of Helsinki, a key issue is professionalizingtechnology transfer. “Public universitiestypically cannot hire first-class professionalswith the requisite expertise to run tech transferoffices.” Instead, they are frequently staffed bycivil servants who lack the relevant research andprivate-sector experience.The EC recognizes that biotech SMEs areimportant to Europe’s economy, but whetherthe biotech sector should receive targetedhelp remains an open question, and one to beexplored further as a new commission comesinto office this month. What is clear, says theEC’s Del Brenna, is that the EC is listening tothe biotech sector and digesting the meeting’srecommendations.Dan Jones Brighton, UKThe US Food and Drug Administration approvedGenentech’s Actemra to treat rheumatoid arthritis.Actemra is the first US-approved drug to target interleukin-6and is aimed at patients who do not respondto older tumor necrosis factor alpha inhibitors.Actemra is also approved in the EU, India, Brazil,Switzerland and Australia.nature biotechnology volume 28 number 2 february 2010 111