The uniqueness of Medicon Valley Alliance

Medicon Valley Alliance (MVA) is a non-profit membership organisation in the Danish-Swedish life science cluster Medicon Valley. They also have the distinction of being the only bi-national cluster region in the Nordics.

All cluster formations within Life Science collaborate with other actors nationally and internationally, but MVA has built an entire life science cluster across two leading life science countries.

“MVA’s mission is to be the leading life science cluster region in the European Union. Life Science is an industry that has developed explosively over the past decade in the region”, says MVA CEO Anette Steenberg.

Creating an ecosystem

The Medicon Valley region in Southern Sweden and Eastern Denmark embraces more than 50,000 life science jobs, 5 life science parks, 9 universities and 28 hospitals.

There are over 300 member companies of MVA, and is constantly expanding with more members from both academia and industry. Together with them, MVA aims to create an ecosystem of life science collaborations, knowledge sharing, attracting investments and talent all contributing to building this region into one of Europe’s most vibrant and competitive life science clusters.

“However, we would also like to look outside Medicon Valley and include more of the Nordic regions in our future collaborations”, Anette notes, and it seems that vision is becoming a reality as the new partnership between Genomic Medicine Sweden and Danish National Genome Center was announced this month.

MVA noted that it is the Medicon Valley Alliance spirit exemplified with Medicon Valley and Stockholm-Uppsala as the beacons of Nordic life science visible to the world.

Constellation of great international interest

In terms of competence and knowledge, Medicon Valley has already come a long way on that front. They are not limited by geographical boundaries, nor by disciplinary boundaries.

“To support collaboration and development throughout the region, we have lots of events during the year,” says Anette. “Morning meetings, workshops, in many different themes that highlight our region’s different strengths and serves as meeting and marketplaces for life science regionally, nationally and globally.”

MVA have several concrete examples of strategic and cross-border projects in fertility treatment (Reprounion project), microbiology (Microbiome signature project) and diabetes (DiaUnion project), to name a few.

Anette’s vision for MVA concludes by explaining how they are seeing, “fantastic academic and industrial skills along with strong public support on both sides of the strait. If we can continue to facilitate increased collaboration and build on common strengths across the border and between academia, public and private sector, we will pave the way for Medicon Valley as world class life science cluster competing with the very best not only in Europe, but also globally.