Swedish Life Science - Yesterday and Today

Why Swedish Life Science?

Life science has during the past decades brought improvements in many areas to people all over the world. Medical inventions in form of drugs and technical aids are the most well known but life sciences also plays an increasingly important part in for example police work, by assisting identification of perpetrators.

Sweden’s track record in the pharmaceutical industry has been outstanding. It is one of the reasons why the Swedish life science industry today is counted among the leading countries in the world. Swedish researchers are also some of the worlds most cited in leading scientific papers.

Ingenious inventions

Sweden has a tradition of world class science and pharmaceuticals.

Sweden is home to the most prestigious science awards in the world, the Nobel prizes, instituted by Alfred Nobel. He is but one in the crowd of famous Swedish scientists where Linné, the founder of modern taxonomy, and Theodore Svedberg, inventor of the ultracentrifuge are others with associations to life science.

Some examples

The pacemaker
The artificial kidney

Pioneering drugs

Losec
Xylocain
Genotropin

World-leading pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca and Pharmacia, now Pfizer, are rooted in this tradition. These two have long dominated the Swedish life science arena but in the past two decades there has been a veritable explosion of life science companies.

Today, the number of Swedish life science companies is estimated to more than 800, including companies in drug discovery, biotech tools and advanced medical device.

The most important sectors of R&D today include drug discovery in metabolic diseases, immunology and neuroscience as well as advanced tools for diagnostics and bioproduction. Sweden is renowned for its high-quality clinical trials and extensive biobanks, including the worlds largest twin register. It also has one of the most research friendly stem cell research legislations in the world. The collaboration between academia, industry and public healthcare is extensive and gives an extra boost to pioneering companies in biotech.

The challenge ahead will be to capture the full potential of Sweden’s technical knowledge and combine it to take Swedish life science to the next level.

Already today the MedTech area is on march, with Elekta as one successfull example.