Life Science

Life science, health and medicine are major areas for emerging technology on Wallonia, and the Competitiveness Clusters, incubators and other collaborations are producing powerful results in the development of "bench-to-bedside" innovations.

The Health cluster Biowin is focused on becoming a world leader in the fight against cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases, and those of the central nervous system (CNS). In these three areas of concentration, they are working to deploy five technologies: Bio-markers, drug therapy, predictive models, drug delivery systems and medical devices.

The cluster is comprised of 100 companies, including world leaders such as GSK Biologicals (vaccine market), UCB (biopharmaceutical) and Ion Beam Applications (IBA) (cyclotron and proton therapy), plus 9 universities, 13 research and training centers and 15 higher technical colleges, all of which make this cluster a formidable competitor. BioWin has also launched a project bringing togather 19 industrial, clinical and academic partners towards the quest for new molecular imaging biomarkers.

Some of the major US healthcare players that have established production, R&D, and distributions facilities in Wallonia are Pfizer, GSK Biologicals, Baxter, Johnson & Johnson. Wallonia is also home to the main production and R&D center in Europe of UCB Biopharma Group, as well as the headquarters of the world's leader in proton therapy, IBA.

Clusters: