Galician biotechnology was identified as a strategic sector of the economy in Galicia’s first Smart Specialisation Strategy, not only for its potential as a sector, but also for its ability to boost innovation in other more traditional sectors, generating economic and social value.

Galician biotechnology is key to facing today's major global challenges, such as pandemics, healthy aging and sustainable production. This is a sector that the Galician Regional Government has been supporting for years with the implementation, in collaboration with producers, of a strategy to promote biotechnology that has already yielded results. One of the examples is that Galicia was the autonomous community with the second highest number of biotechnology companies created in 2020.

The efforts of the Galician Government are focused on working to establish alliances and share goals by uniting the capacities of all the agents involved towards a common goal: to boost the growth of the Galician biotechnology sector by promoting collaboration between scientists and entrepreneurs to generate value from knowledge as well as by facilitating access to financing for business projects with the potential to grow in size.

The Galician Regional Government has established two priorities in this area. The first of these is the consolidation of biotechnology in Galicia as a strategic sector and pillar of a new knowledge-based economic model to be promoted.

The second priority has to do with the promotion of innovative entrepreneurship with the aim of valuing the knowledge produced in Galician universities and research centres.

At this moment the Galician Regional Government through the Galician Innovation Agency is implementing the Consolidation Strategy of the sector for the 2021-2025 period to underpin the results achieved and address new challenges. The new strategy, which aims to mobilise more than 660 million euros, aims to position Galicia as one of the main biotechnology regions on the international stage, promoting business generation and business consolidation.

To achieve the objectives, Galicia has extensive research capabilities and a business network that is consolidating the community as a benchmark at the national and international level, grouped around the three business clusters and a European Digital Innovation Hub, DataLife, which has just been co-funded by the European Commission for the deployment of its portfolio of services within three years, a project that has a budget of nearly 6 million euros.

In addition, Galicia is one of the five autonomous communities participating in the complementary plan for biotechnology applied to health promoted by the Ministry of Science and Innovation with funds from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism. Within the framework of this collaboration, Galicia will contribute to further progress in the development of tools for diagnosis, prognosis and personalised medicine therapies.

Its own model of entrepreneurship

Galicia has its own model of innovative entrepreneurship that consists of fostering the development of projects in early stages and promoting the creation of technology-based companies. The Business Factories network supports incubators and accelerators specialised in strategic sectors, such as the automotive, food, aerospace and pharmaceutical industries.

It includes BioIncubaTech, a high-tech incubator promoted by the USC specialised in promoting innovation and the transfer of biotechnology in the field of health and food technologies to micro-SMEs. The incubator also includes Business Factory Medicines, a sort of continuation of the early drug incubator launched in 2017, which now, driven by the Kaertor Foundation, the Galician Regional Government, the companies Janssen and Lilly and the AECC Foundation, promotes the discovery of new effective drugs for unmet medical needs and their purchase.

The Galician Regional Government also backs the Ignicia programme, which supports the arrival to the market of the results of research carried out in the community's centres of knowledge. In total, through the proof-of-concept call, support was given to the creation of 9 spin-offs, three in the biotechnology sector, which have already attracted 5 million euros in investment and created 80 highly qualified jobs.

Finally, and still within the objective of positioning Galicia as a leading region in biotechnology, there is XesGalicia whose venture capital funds have supported 12 companies since 2009, also reaching co-investment agreements with private venture capital funds.

All of these measures and programmes linked to the Strategy for the Consolidation of Biotechnology in Galicia aim to promote a collaborative ecosystem that favours entrepreneurship, growth and to draw companies to Galicia.