Denmark is premium life science destination say expert panel

In Denmark, scientific excellence, business building know-how and availability of funding from seed to stock market is now at a point where international life science founders are starting to take notice. Some even give serious consideration to moving from traditional start-up hot-spots such as Kendall Square in Boston, USA, to up- and-coming Danish alternatives such as Innovation District Copenhagen in the Danish capital. This became clear at the panel debate “Of course you should choose Denmark” at the 2024 TechBBQ event. By Jes Andersen.

To discuss the claim, the annual tech start-up event had invited:

• Colleen Acosta, CEO of women’s health start-up Freya Biosciences
• Mads Lacoppidan, Managing Director for Life Science & Partner at the national promotional bank and export credit agency of Denmark, EIFO
• Mikkel Skovborg, Senior Vice President for innovation at the commercial fund Novo Nordisk Foundation.
• The debate was moderated by Jes Andersen, communications officer at Innovation District Copenhagen.

CHOOSE DENMARK

Freya Biosciences recently raised one of the biggest series A funding rounds ever in women’s health. The start-up is about to enter clinical trials with its next generation microbial immunotherapy-product that targets inflammation in the reproductive tract, and for Silicon Valley-born Acosta, there were several reasons to choose Denmark for her start-up.

I found a tremendous amount of talent here. Both in strain-development, which is vital to a microbe-based bioscience product, and in fermentation, which is vital in scaling production. Denmark also has great tax benefits for R&D related expenditures. The Danish sovereign fund EIFO was instrumental for our funding round… And Copenhagen is a fantastic place to live”: Colleen Acosta, CEO, Freya Biosciences.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Apart from strong talents in pharma and other relevant sciences, Denmark is also on track to launch some very serious infrastructure. One of the world’s most powerful AI-supercomputers, Gefion, is expected to go online before New Years 2024. Even more ambitious, Danish researchers are working towards the world’s first fully functional quantum computer. These, and several other projects, have been co-funded by the foundation which owns pharma-giant Novo Nordisk.

I start to see all this critical scaling infrastructure come into place. I cannot stress enough how transformational a technology like quantum computing will be for life science. Being at the very front of that game gives Denmark a huge competitive advantage”: Mikkel Skovborg, Senior Vice President for innovation, Novo Nordisk Foundation.

FUNDING

Funding has famously been an achillea’s heel for European countries. Denmark not excluded. But things are looking up for this small Scandinavian country. A five-fold growth in life science investments in the period 2019-2023 has made Demark the European leader corrected for GDP.

Within life science, Denmark is now in the funding Premier League. If this trend continues, Denmark may supersede even the UK in life science investments in just 5 years. This would imply that Denmark becomes the European leader in absolute terms. The significant rise in investments is led by traditional life science investments, and increasingly by the converging fields of classic life science investments and tech. Denmark is already one of the most digitized countries. We hope the launch of the new AI super computer, Gefion, will allow for greater utilisation of Denmark’s unique population wide health-registries allowing for even better health solutions in the future”: Mads Lacoppidan, Managing Director for Life Science, EIFO.

ECOSYSTEM

Denmark is home to what recently became the world’s wealthiest charitable foundation. During most of Novo Nordisk Foundations’ 100 years of history it has supported excellent research at Danish universities. Since 2017 it has expanded to support its commercialization. Most notably with the incubator BioInnovation Institute. This complements a publicly funded business support system that is becoming increasingly professionalized.

Kudos to the Danish government for daring to make a superfund out of EIFO. Our foundation has a lot of firepower, but we need the public sector to lean in and push. The public sector can be intelligent and powerful in driving innovation and Denmark is becoming increasingly great at public-private partnerships. In fact, it’s never been better”: Mikkel Skovborg, Senior Vice President for innovation, Novo Nordisk Foundation.

INNOVATION DISTRICT

Innovation districts are a very real value proposition to international entrepreneurs and the one in Copenhagen is doing extremely well when it comes to business support, early-stage funding and specialist talent. Compared to mature innovation ecosystems such as Silicon Valley and Kendall Square however, it still has a shortage of C-level managers with start-up experience. But like the companies, these too are starting to show an interest in Denmark, Copenhagen and the innovation district.

I’m from Silicon Valley and I have worked in Kendall Square. Innovation districts foster excitement about innovation and that has a snowball effect where talent attracts more talent. I think it’s a big statement for the country to say that: Yes. We prioritize innovation and we are prepared to put a lot of financing into that”: Colleen Acosta, CEO, Freya Bioscience.