From Nobel to next-gen: Sweden’s quiet life sciences ascent
Sweden’s place on the frontier of science has an extended historical past, with the capital Stockholm coming to a standstill yearly since 1901 in keen anticipation of the Nobel Prize award bulletins.
The most recent prize – the 2025 Laureates being introduced in October – got here after work on peripheral immune tolerance. Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi recognized the immune system’s safety guards, regulatory T cells, laying the inspiration for a brand new discipline of analysis.
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A portion of that progress is being made within the nation the prizes are awarded nonetheless to today. Sweden is cementing itself as a hub of drug innovation over its Nordic neighbours, regardless of Europe’s second most dear firm being primarily based in Denmark. However being dwelling to a couple huge pharma superpowers doesn’t essentially equate to superpower innovation.
Advantages of huge pharma vacuum
Sweden’s life science sector gives nearly 10% of the nation’s complete product export. Since 2014, the online gross sales of Sweden’s life science business have greater than doubled, reaching a formidable 474 billion SEK ($50bn) in 2022, as per a report by commerce physique SwedenBIO.
In the meantime, the Swedish Innovation Company recognized 3,838 firms throughout the life science sector in 2022.
There have been 1,660 firms in Denmark’s life science business in 2020, the final publicly obtainable 12 months of knowledge. Three of those embody huge pharma firms: weight reduction developer Novo Nordisk, neuroscience specialist Lundbeck, and the dermatology-portfolio firm Leo Pharma.
Sweden was acquainted territory for business heavyweights on the flip of the millennium. Astra AB, a significant pharmaceutical firm within the nation, merged with England’s Zeneca Group to type AstraZeneca in 1999. There was additionally Pharmacia, a big firm acquired by Pfizer for $60bn in 2003.
“Having had two world main gamers the place quite a lot of us labored means there’s a large amount of expertise in Sweden,” says David Westberg, CEO of Nanexa, and a former world undertaking supervisor at Pharmacia.
“This not simply throughout the Nordic or Scandinavian group but additionally working internationally on different points of drug improvement,” he provides.
Whereas Denmark boasts the headquarters of huge pharma gamers, the variety of biotechs doesn’t attain Sweden’s stage. The plethora of Sweden’s biopharma startup scene has partly led to the nation’s high-ranking within the 2025 International Innovation Index. Measured throughout numerous innovation parameters towards 138 different nations, Sweden is positioned second solely to Switzerland.
“Sweden has been starved of a giant pharma firm for a few years. Large business gamers pull and raise the whole ecosystem. With out that you could roll up your sleeves and do extra your self,” says Klaus Langhoff-Roos, CEO of Swedish biotech BioLamina.
Langhoff-Roos used to work at Novo Nordisk and led the corporate’s world commercialisation of Ozempic (semaglutide), which means he has a very good deal with on the nuances between Sweden and Denmark’s environments.
Novo Nordisk underpins a lot of the cash flowing out and in of Denmark – the corporate’s peak market capitalisation of $604bn even surpassed the nation’s GDP in 2024.
“Sweden had huge pharma, and that implies that you continue to have nice competences and sensible folks. While you then shut manufacturing websites otherwise you offshore processes, you continue to have nice scientists and nice manufacturing experience. All these concepts must go someplace,” Langhoff-Roos feedback.
One such instance is showcased with CDMO NorthX. The corporate acquired a Stockholm-based web site from French vaccine specialist Valneva in 2023, with 30 employees making the transfer too. Janet Hoogstraate, then head of Valneva Sweden, was later appointed CEO of NorthX.
Hoogstraate says: “It’s all concerning the folks – they make it work.”
In Denmark, a divestment of Novo’s amenities and employees may yield comparable outcomes.
Langhoff-Roos says: “If the identical vacuum had been to hit Denmark, I’d anticipate that the innovation index would go up there as effectively. Proper now, that experience is being sucked into Novo Nordisk. That’s the dynamic distinction between Sweden and Denmark.”
Novo is present process a risky interval in an in any other case profitable decade, having fallen behind Eli Lilly within the weight reduction and sort 2 diabetes remedy market. This culminated in 9,000 jobs being lower in September 2025. Simply over half the quantity to be axed are primarily based in Denmark.
“After Novo reduces its staff, there can be quite a lot of startups in Denmark that begin to come via. There’s a lot expertise there ready to be harnessed,” Westberg forecasts.
Funding not matching innovation
One of many greatest fragilities within the Swedish pharma panorama is the dearth of funding. Regardless of a pipeline that ranks fifth in Europe as per one other report by SwedenBIO, biopharmaceutical firms within the nation have been unable to match the extent of funding from European friends.
In keeping with GlobalData evaluation, pharmaceutical enterprise capital (VC) offers between 2020-2022 in Sweden totalled $173m. This pales compared to $712m throughout the identical interval in Denmark.
“We now have a scarcity of VCs that spend money on seed funding and so forth. Which means the valuation of Swedish firms in comparison with, if we had been say within the US, is an element of 10 and even decrease,” Westberg notes.
A big proportion of cash as an alternative comes through licensing offers. Large pharma firms are identified for plugging the hole that buyers don’t fill, and Sweden’s lacklustre investor scene creates ample alternative for that.
Westberg’s Nanexa is a type of firms, signing a deal value as much as SEK 63.3m ($6.6m) with Novo Nordisk in 2022. The Danish drugmaker was enticed by Nanexa’s PharmaShell platform that allows longer appearing injectables whereas sustaining low injection quantity. On the identical time, Novo Nordisk additionally acquired a 16% stake in Nanexa, a uncommon transfer for the corporate whose sister enterprise, Novo Holdings, often decides fairness outlay.
One among Sweden’s most up-to-date success tales got here from Stockholm-based BioArctic. Professor Lars Lannfelt based the corporate along with Pär Gellerfors in 2003 to develop an antibody remedy primarily based on the previous’s groundbreaking discoveries of the position of amyloid-beta protein in Alzheimer’s illness. BioArctic finally codeveloped Leqembi (lecanemab) with Eisai, the first authorized drug in a brand new wave of Alzheimer’s therapies.
Since then, Novartis and Bristol Myers Squibb have signed licensing offers value $800m and $1.35bn respectively for different programmes in BioArctic’s portfolio. Nevertheless, BioArctic’s monetary success stays an anomaly amid a weaker funding scene in Sweden.
“Funding is the place the danger of the Swedish ecosystem is at. Capital makes certain your concept isn’t taken by another person,” Langhoff-Roos says.
Authorities and institute backing
The Swedish authorities has lengthy touted the significance of the life sciences sector within the nation’s development plans. In late 2024, ministers printed a report with up to date goals in attaining development amid poor funding tendencies.
One of many long-range infrastructure investments that would assistance is SciLife Lab, a nationwide centre in Stockholm that gives researchers in fields akin to biomedicine, ecology, and evolution with entry to superior applied sciences and experience.
Pharmaceutical Know-how met with SciLife Lab’s Anna Frejd, who urged the significance of collaborating carefully with tutorial establishments so as to spur early-stage, promising analysis.
Close by is the well-known Karolinska Institute, Sweden’s largest analysis centre. The college’s incubator system oversees the START programme, a framework to assist scale tasks out of academia and into start-ups able to commercialisation.
These are the form of initiatives that Westberg wish to see extra of.
“We’re extraordinarily good at innovation, however we could possibly be higher at commercialisation of these improvements,” he says.
In the meantime, on the Japanese fringe of the Karolinska Institute campus lies the Nobel Discussion board. It’s on this unassuming brick constructing the place the winners of the Nobel Prizes are determined annually.
It’s on this part the place Sweden’s life science scene is maybe finest characterised. The all-glass analysis laboratories mirrored within the Nobel Discussion board’s secretive home windows mirror each the legacy and way forward for science within the nation.
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