Nordic Life Science 1
With 24,000 square meters of flexible offices and
spaces, the vision is that Forskaren in Hagastaden will create exchange of knowledge and cooperation. T E X T b y M AL IN O T M ANI (Infra Access for Life Science Sweden), the three facilities will engage the broad life science community and jointly develop new technology-, data- and challenge-driven capabilities across all sectors of life science. SWEDEN The InfraLife hub will build began in the middle of November 2020, marking the start of a new phase for what will be a central hub for Swedish life science-research. According to Vectura Fastigheter, with its concept of creating a center for innovation and development, in a place where half of the region’s life-science companies exist, Forskaren has already made an international breakthrough. “I believe that Forskaren will have a lot of successors, not only in Sweden. I know that many countries are following us. I have received a lot of questions about how to start a collaboration, between academia, authorities, and large and small companies in a way that leads to results and creates dynamics,” says Ibrahim Baylan, Sweden’s Minister for Enterprise. Forskaren will be ready for people to move in by the turn of the year 2023–2024 and will then be the hub in what is called Vetenskapsstaden in the northern part of Stockholm, with Bayer, Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, as its closest neighbors. NLS on the individual external relations functions at the three infrastructures, by bridging them and providing a single point of entry. Two industrial branch organisations, SwedenBio and Läkemedelsindustriföreningen (LIF), will act as partners and provide a link to the industrial life science community. One of the goals of the project is to engage with existing challenge-driven and cross-sectorial large collaborations in order to best utilize available technologies at the three infrastructures, and thereby tackle major challenges within the field of life science. A kick-off workshop is planned for the spring of 2021, and one of the first tasks will be to gather stakeholders connected to the field of antibiotic resistance. A number of further workshops and activities with other focus areas will follow. NORDIC LIFE SCIENCE 9 PHOTO VECTURA FASTIGHETER