Germany Sees Biotech Field With New Eyes

When noted biochemistry professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker began lobbying the government for a gene research center in the mid-1980s, the very notion of trying to crack the human genetic code was so taboo that he became a target of radical environmentalists and the terrorist Red Army Faction.

So unwelcome was any thought of “interfering with God” in rewriting the human body’s computer program, Winnacker recalls, that the government had to post armed guards outside his home and sheathe his office in bulletproof glass.

But as the best and brightest of German scientists fled to the more supportive environment of U.S. labs and contributed to breakthroughs in treating debilitating and fatal diseases, Germans came to the conclusion that gene technology offered great promise in improving the quality and longevity of life.

And suddenly, as one recently repatriated entrepreneur puts it, “biotech start-ups began sprouting up around here like mushrooms after a warm rain.” More than 600 German firms are now engaged in genetic research, the vast majority founded within the last five years.

This glass-and-steel industrial park on the outskirts of Munich has become an incubator for biotech business in that short time span. Many of the small private firms rising from the ubiquitous construction sites are flush with newfound venture capital and income from initial public offerings of stock.

It’s been made possible by a synergy of reversed public sympathies, watershed genetic discoveries and a changing attitude in this country toward entrepreneurial success and personal wealth.

The convergence of events has given Germany and its scientific elite a chance to do their part in treating what ails the world, from AIDS to cancer.

And, say industry leaders, the biotech boom has created the opportunity for Germany’s once-vaunted pharmaceutical giants such as Bayer, Hoechst and Schering to recover their global positions after 15 years of “biotechnophobia” that allowed U.S. competitors to surge to the fore.

Although the biotechnology discoveries of the 1970s and ‘80s benefited the U.S. labs that underwrote them, many German scientists were instrumental in the developments. Some have returned to their homeland now that the atmosphere is more supportive.

Axel Ullrich, who cloned the first gene for human insulin during his postdoctoral work at UC San Francisco and helped develop a drug for treatment of breast cancer while at Sugen Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., now divides his time between business interests in the United States and this biotech village.

Like others watching the rapid expansion of gene and genome technology here, he senses a sea change in attitudes among German scientists and within the ossified halls of academia that have long suppressed entrepreneurial spirits.

“These uncomplicated, aggressive, let’s-just-do-it kind of guys you find in the United States--we just didn’t have that here,” Ullrich said. “But I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see young people now adopting those styles and attitudes. There’s such enthusiasm now, which is another German syndrome. We have a tendency to sleep for a long time, then dive into something with tremendous zeal and pursuit of perfection.”

Among the attitudinal changes he sees from a decade ago is the increasing acceptance, even admiration, of those who become rich from their inventions.

“When I came back 10 years ago, it was assumed by everyone that I had made a pile of money, and I felt very excluded,” Ullrich says of the professional cold shoulder then given those who made their mark in U.S. laboratories, where top scientists are better compensated than at German facilities. “This reaction of envy is still a problem, but it’s much better now.”

He and other leading genetic researchers spent the early years of their careers across the Atlantic because there was virtually no opportunity to do the work in Germany in the face of such strident public protest, he says. Even the big pharmaceutical companies that wanted to invest in gene research sent their money overseas to avoid becoming political targets.

Hoechst, once the world’s No. 1 drug manufacturer, poured $200 million into a gene lab at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1980s. Other big players in Germany had decided that they didn’t need to back biotechnology at all because they could buy it from the U.S. leaders, said Ullrich.

But much of that has changed.

“There is far more insight now into the benefits of biotechnology, especially in the life science fields. There are new vaccines and new drugs now capable of treating the causes of disease, not just symptoms,” said Bernhard Hertel, managing director of Garching Innovation, a Max Planck Society offspring that helps create viable private companies from the state-financed research network.

Over the last decade, Garching has played midwife to 31 start-ups that have created more than 1,000 jobs and has 13 projects in the works this year, said Hertel. The first private company spun off was Sugen, recently bought by Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc., the U.S. pharmaceutical giant.

Winnacker, who no longer needs police protection, is now on leave from his professorship at the University of Munich to oversee the German Research Society, a Bonn-based federal agency that functions like a hybrid of the National Institutes for Health and the National Science Foundation in the United States.

“Gene research was an important stage, but genomics is a revolution,” the mild-mannered academic says about the relatively new science exploring the interaction of the genetic code. “This makes it possible to analyze the complex biological aspects of diseases like cancer so we know why it develops the way it does and how we might influence it. The outlook is incredible.”

Among the projects in the works here is an examination of how nerve cells are genetically programmed to prevent their reproducing themselves after being severed--information that could one day make it possible to reverse paraplegia, Winnacker said. Others involve development of drugs to treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other degenerative diseases.

“We lost a considerable amount of time, but genomics discoveries came so much later that they have leveled the playing field somewhat,” Winnacker said. “Now, the situation is very good for German scientists to remain here. The question is how to get more American scientists to come here, to mix it up a bit.”

Germany’s turnabout on gene research was spurred by an ambitious government project in the mid-1990s that made matching funds available for biotech start-ups in three designated regions in and around the cities of Cologne, Heidelberg and Munich.

“Germany was one of the major high-technology countries in the world after the United States and Japan, and some people suddenly realized biotechnology is the way of the future,” said Bernd Seizinger, who left his home and business in Princeton, N.J., last year to head Genome Pharmaceuticals Co. here. “There needs to be enormous effort made not only to get into this field but to catch up to the United States.”

He described the availability of venture capital here as better than across the Atlantic at the moment and thoroughly revolutionized from a decade ago, when hardly a German citizen risked investing his savings in anything but a low-return passbook account.

Like other movers in the science community, Seizinger sees the fever of mergers and acquisitions among the pharmaceutical titans as an opportunity for biotech firms to take on responsibility for important medicinal breakthroughs. Firms like his make the discoveries, then the big drug companies use their production, marketing and distribution power to bring the products to the consumer.

“Most pharmaceutical companies are driven by the products they sell, not [research and development],” he said. “A biotech company’s value is in the creativity of its people.”

Exuding the enthusiasm of an inventor, he described how genome research is mapping the “computer program that tells the body how to live” and will one day allow medicine to intervene when the program is defective.

“We’re just at the beginning of this,” he insists. “It’s . . . a true paradigm shift in the history of medicine.”

He describes the pace of genome discoveries as so accelerated that Germany may catch up to U.S. counterparts despite its 15-to-20-year lag in getting started.

German firms still play a minor role in comparison with U.S. companies, which account for more than 330 of the 400 publicly traded biotechnology companies listed on the world’s stock markets, German media report. But two of the most recent IPOs, Hamburg’s Evotech and local start-up MorphoSys, have seen their stock values more than quintuple since launching in October.

Opposition remains fierce in Europe to what scientists call “green genetics,” or modification of the basic substances of crops and animals. But scientists say this resistance will dissipate as well once the global public is educated about the value it offers in feeding the world’s growing ranks of hungry citizens.

“This technology will change our lives, especially if we overcome our food phobia,” says Ullrich, trumpeting genetic engineering’s promise for feeding the Third World and shielding food from disease, toxins and the whims of weather. “As long as Earth wants to sustain an ever-increasing population, it must expand these branches of science. People want to live longer, healthier lives.”