Nordic Life Science 1
CAREER CHOICE // BIOTECH TALENT The Biostart educ
ation program was launched to provide driven and motivated individuals with basic technical laboratory training and assess their potential to join the company. W Asad Edman, Senior Process Technician, Anocca HEN AN OPPORTUNITY opened up for Senior Process Technician Asad Edman to learn what it was like to work at a lab at Anocca in 2021, he jumped at it. At the time, he had concluded his high school diploma and was looking for ways to enter the job market – what he found was Anocca’s Biostart programme. “The first thing you need to have in order to succeed in this job is focus,” Asad Edman says. “I’ve been trained in-house and I didn’t have any prior education in biology or any previous ATMP [Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products] training. But if you have focus and good learning skills, you can be trained and do a good job.” A dearth of talent with suitable training Anocca is one of several life science companies now residing in former AstraZeneca facilities in Södertälje, south of Stockholm. The company is creating a pipeline of precision T cell immunotherapies, with a focus on engineering TCR-T cell therapies for untreatable cancers, and carries out both research and development as well as manufacturing. Anocca relies on a diversity of skills and experience for roles across its organization. When it comes to recruiting entry-level laboratory technicians in the biotechnology space, however, the company found there was a dearth of talent with suitable training and job expectations. “It’s been challenging that most people we hire come straight out of the universities with Masters and PhD degrees – that’s the profile we needed for the first eight years of operations,” Anocca’s Chief Operating Officer Viktor Arnkil muses, looking back on the company’s development since it was established in 2014. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG | 25 PHOTO ANOCCA