« Je t’aime, moi non plus » — how The Netherlands and the biotech industry are living the greatest love story ever told

Everyone loves a good story — and love stories are the best ones to remember. Ask anyone about the lunch Harry and Sally share at Katz’s Delicatessen. Virtually everyone knows that scene — baby boomers, millennials — even people who haven’t seen the film know about it. What makes Harry and Sally a great (love) story, as the common cliché goes, is that love is like a rollercoaster. Harry and Sally will spend ninety-six minutes loving, hating, tearing and teasing each other. And as rollercoasters and love stories go — the biotech industry and The Netherlands are perhaps writing one of the greatest love stories ever told.

First of all — the basis of any good love story — everybody knows that The Netherlands and the biotech industry are a good match. The Netherlands is the most competitive economy in Europe and the 4th most competitive worldwide according to the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Global Competitiveness Index. In addition to strong economic fundamentals, The Netherlands showcases one of the densest life sciences and health clusters in Europe, featuring 420 biopharmaceutical companies and 2,900 R&D life sciences companies, 12 research universities, 85 hospitals, around 200 public-private partnerships, according to Health Holland. The biotech industry, on the other hand, is a highly competitive sector that makes a major contribution to the economy. In the US — home to the world’s largest and most competitive biotech clusters such as Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA — the sector’s revenue is estimated to have been on average 10% higher than the rest of the economy over the past decade (Nature, 2016). We are living a 3rd biotech revolution characterized by breakthrough technologies (gene-silencing, CAR-T etc.) and by the emergence of a new wave of companies that carrying most of these radical innovations and provide an opportunity to attract significant investment and growth for countries willing to make that bet. And nobody in Europe beats the Dutch in the biotech bidding bet right now.

The Dutch set their hearts and minds to life sciences several years ago, and, as lovers do, launched a massive charm offensive aimed at the life sciences sector. Life sciences was identified by the Dutch authorities as a strategic sector, with the establishment of several public bodies dedicated to building local infrastructure and attracting foreign life sciences companies — in particular from the US. Nobody can deny how successful that policy has been — having led to massive investments from biotech companies setting up international operations and facilities in The Netherlands. The EU’s decision to relocate the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to Amsterdam in the wake of the Brexit vote is the crown jewel of that life sciences charm campaign.

But today we are moving to phase two of our love story’s plot, amidst signals that endless passion is giving way to the frustrations of an old couple settling in. Pharmaceutical pricing and healthcare expenditures have become a regular topic of disagreement in our couple, with very public outbursts. This is not just talk. Several initiatives are being promoted here and abroad to curb pharmaceutical expenditures and address the problem of excessive drug prices: challenges to intellectual property and regulatory protection at European level; international collaboration on drug negotiations with Belgium and other countries, a toughening of national pricing rules in the Netherlands. The biotech and pharma industry have very openly complained about this direction of travel, which seems to be in obvious contradiction with The Netherlands’ industrial policy agenda to attract life sciences companies, investors and innovators.

As leaders of the life sciences community, we do not want the story to end here. We believe that the greatest challenges are solved by passion, optimism and resilience. Nothing illustrates this better than science. Take RNA interference for example. Based on a discovery made in the 90s that led to a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2006, it has been seen as a new promising field for the development of medicines. However, many companies failed in their efforts to translate that scientific discovery into actual therapies. While several larger pharmaceutical companies left the RNAi research field, Alnylam persevered and, over the past 17 years, has raised over $5 billion, of which over $3 billion has been spent on research and development in its mission to develop a new class of medicines based on RNAi. We believe that we need to apply that same resilience, optimism and commitment in our relationship with the Dutch authorities. RNA therapy-company ProQR has also benefited from its Dutch roots and received an Innovation Credit from the Dutch Government for one of its rare blindness disorder therapies. The Innovation Credit is awarded by the Dutch government through its agency RVO of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and is aimed at the development of promising innovations. Awards like this showcase the government’s support and understanding of growing this industry and helping companies excel in the life sciences.

This is why we have decided not to remain passive and want to contribute to the next phase of the love story. We started that naturally by taking the pen — literally — and signing together with the authorities and key stakeholders a Memorandum of Understanding, laying the basis for a Massachusetts — The Netherlands Transatlantic Life Sciences Partnership. We are pursuing discussions on how to translate those words into actions. Like any relationship, it will take patience, resilience and work. But we are committed to it. And we know it will work. Because fundamentally, biotech and The Netherlands are the perfect match. This has been proven not so long ago by our late friend Henri A. Termeer, Dutch entrepreneur and visionary CEO of Genzyme. Henri has changed the world of life sciences and biotech as we know it, by developing a sustainable model to innovate in rare diseases. We owe him and rare disease patients a happy ending.