Biotech innovation is thriving in the Nordics — read 4 themes defining 2024

Biotechnology, by any measure, is not easy. It requires innovation, capital, persistence, and possibly even some good fortune along the way. But one thing that can’t be overlooked is the importance of community. While many biotechs operate in competitive markets, one thing that makes this industry special is the ability for companies and institutions to work together wherever possible for the advancement of human health and sustainability. This is very likely the reason biotechnology companies often appear in clusters across the world, where strong communities of scientists and companies can move faster together. This was on full display as Benchling hosted the 3rd Annual Nordic Digital Science and Innovation Day. Over 300 R&D leaders, scientists, data specialists, and industry leaders converged in Copenhagen to share ideas and strengthen this regional community. 

The Nordics region is a thriving biotech powerhouse across Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland. Over 800 biotechs, medtechs, pharmaceutical companies, and ecosystem partners create an R&D engine that has 900 active clinical assets in development in fields such as oncology, neurology, and metabolic disease. Despite modest population size (e.g., only 6 million in Denmark and 11 million in Sweden), this region competes on a global scale. 

So what happens when hundreds of Nordic biotech professionals get together for the day? This event had a jam-packed agenda filled with scientific presentations, roundtables, panel discussions, and networking. Here are four key themes that summed up the event.

R&D leaders and scientists gathered for a day of networking and panel discussions during Benchling's 3rd Annual Nordic Digital Science and Innovation Day.

1. You can go faster and farther when you work together 

While biotechs must inevitably compete for capital, talent, and market share, there are many opportunities to work together in pre-competitive alliances, R&D partnerships, and technology ecosystems. Anette Steenberg, CEO of Medicon Valley Alliance, delivered an opening keynote that highlighted the power of their non-profit, cross-border, biotech industry organization. She shared examples of how her 330+ member group provided a unified voice for advocacy in the wake of pending EU patent legislation pertaining to pharmaceuticals, and created a one-of-kind cross-border biobank targeting infertility that many thought could never be done. 

Other collaboration highlights included the Danish biotech juggernaut Novonesis (recently formed from the merger of Novozymes and Chr. Hansen), who discussed their digital health partnership with Unseen Bio and AGC Biologics, a global CDMO with a presence in Copenhagen. They’re building innovative models to support their biotech partners with structured CMC data, digital twins, and electronic batch records.

Biotech leaders shared insights on topics from AI, to digitalisation, to collaboration, and beyond.

2. Never stop innovating

Innovation is the lifeblood of the biotech industry, and this year’s speakers shared a diverse range of Nordic scientific innovation. Adam Baker, Director of Science, Future Labs at Novonesis, presented their research on the human microbiome. There is a fundamental relationship between the microbiome, consisting of over 5,000 species, and human health across a number of conditions including gastrointestinal, neurological, and pregnancy. Using deep sequencing, computational modeling, AI, and an innovative artificial gut system, they’ve been able to characterize important microbiome pathways that are leading to advancements in the field. 

Jordi Chi, Senior Research Scientist at pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, discussed innovations in plasmid generation for their biologics R&D. What was once a manual, outsourced process that took 6 weeks per cycle has now been reduced to a 2- to 3-week process. This new process represents a remarkable productivity gain that can also produce longer and more complex constructs. The process is now built on a digital pipeline, using platforms such as Benchling (read more in our AstraZeneca case study), to centralize data, track samples in progress, and make it easier to recycle previously-built constructs.  

3. No matter where you are on your digital R&D transformation, keep going! 

Digitalisation of core R&D functions remains a key way to improve efficiency, data accessibility, and scientific insights. For most companies, this requires focused investment and change management to make real progress here. And R&D organizations cannot stop their work solely to focus on digital initiatives.

As one event delegate quipped, “The Lab of the Future sounds nice, but right now I need the Lab of Today.” Digitalisation of an R&D lab is a journey. Saji Wickramesekara, CEO of Benchling, highlighted research from Benchling’s State of Tech in Biopharma report in his opening keynote indicating that 72% of R&D labs have yet to achieve data interoperability. Some companies even remarked that critical GMP processes still operate on paper. But these are all starting points for digital and data innovation. Saji described a vision for the connected lab, where instruments send data into centralized, structured data stores that can be widely accessed and mined for scientific insights.

These transformations become enabled when scientists, data specialists, and IT professionals align around common objectives. As an example, Christian Skjødt, Associate Scientific Director at Symphogen (a Servier company), presented a cloud-based data management solution their team built to reduce scientific data handling difficulty and improve data quality. 

4. Get ready for AI-fueled innovation in biotech R&D

While artificial intelligence (AI) approaches such as machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLM) hold promise for every industry, there is a unique value proposition in the biotech industry to increase the number of products that get to market and improve human health. But the challenges in biotech are also unique.

Scientists working at the bench have not always been fully integrated with the data science function. Saji spoke in his keynote about the need to bring the wet lab and the dry lab together around a central source of truth for data. On this foundation, you can begin to deliver AI-driven automation for the wet lab, while fueling the dry lab with AI-ready data to continually improve model predictions and insights. 

Saji Wickramasekara, CEO and co-founder at Benchling, delivered an opening keynote discussing the power of AI for biotech.

Carlos G. Acevedo-Rocha, Senior Researcher from The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain), presented a novel software application to make ML more accessible and reproducible for protein engineering. There is a large range of models for generative protein design, and many ways in which protein engineers need to tailor the properties, such as binding, solubility, and stability. Their ML-powered application helps scientists access different models to generate libraries of proteins to evaluate, all on an open-source tool that doesn’t require code.  

See you in 2025

It was a pleasure to host so many biotech thought leaders and innovators in Copenhagen this year. From the opening keynotes in the morning, to the interactive discussions at lunch, to the afternoon reception, it was an amazing day to spend together. It was even rumored that the biotech networking continued long into the evening at Copenhagen’s fabulous nightlife establishments 😉. Thanks to our speakers and guests for making a memorable day… see you again in 2025!