The second largest city in the Czech Republic is hoping to capitalize on its skilled workforce and partnership with the United States’ Mayo Clinic by becoming a European biotechnology hub. The research center that is based in Rochester, Minnesota is known around the globe for treating rare diseases and some of the biggest names in the world, as well as performing research. It is the first time the clinic has gone overseas.
Brno is about halfway between Prague and Vienna in the southeast part of the country, and is home to the Constitutional Court of the country as well as its Supreme Court. There are several universities in town, including Masaryk University, the second largest in the country, and the Brno University of Technology. The universities are one of the main reasons that Mayo Clinic looked to this city of some 380,000 residents.
The current plan for Brno is for the government to invest some US $500 million in the town and to build a Medipark life science campus at Masaryk University. This will be a regional EU center that focuses on biotechnology, and it will have an electron accelerator. There is a new International Clinical Research Center that will be one of the EU’s largest biotech and medical research centers. It is expected to draw researchers and biotech companies to the city and is planned to be fully up and running in 2010.
So far, researches from the Mayo Clinic and Brno have published 14 papers and been awarded three patents for medical devices in the United States. It is hoped that these initial successes will continue long into the future.
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