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Making Medicine Cheaper . . .
Edward Dutton interviews Peter Neubauer of
Oulu’s Aurora Biotec Company
 In
layman’s terms Prof. Peter Neubauer’s company does something
pretty simple: it makes medicine easier to produce and
therefore cheaper. And hopefully the company also helps to
create jobs in Oulu, keeping some of the many scientists
that train here in the city after they graduate.
Originally from Germany, Peter did a doctorate in
Microbiology and after a postdoc in Sweden, he was offered a
Professorship in Bioprocess Engineering at Oulu University
in 2000. But Peter’s new Professorship was to be more than
just experiments and writing articles.
Taking New Ideas Further
Peter recalled that, back in 2000, Oulu was very
successful in terms of the electronics industry, such as
Nokia, but not so much in terms of medical research. His
task in the new Professorship was to, ‘collaborate between
technical disciplines and biosciences . . . to support new
spin-offs and take new innovative ideas further.’ Basically
it was to turn the research going on under him into new
bio-businesses and to support existing biocompanies with
innovative ideas. As such, Peter’s Bioprocess Engineering
Laboratory has some collaboration with the Business Studies
Department at Oulu University of Applied Sciences and he
even showed me a B.Sc thesis from there looking at how to
start up Bio-companies as successful business ventures.
Earlier this year, Peter jointly launched ‘Aurora Biotech’
along with six other scientists and an experienced financial
adviser. It now has its first investors who will underwrite
its contracts through the many contacts that Peter has in
the industry. The company has developed a ‘new media
formulation’ on which ‘micro-organisms’ can be grown ‘very
densely.’ This may seem very technical but it what it means
is that more micro-organisms can be produced more
efficiently. This means that the products of these
micro-organisms – such as insulin and antibiotics – can be
produced more efficiently. And this ultimately pushes down
the costs involved in development of drug processes and
therefore eventually the cost of medicines to the consumer.
It all has a knock on effect.
‘A Good Scientific Community’
Though this business venture is relatively new, Peter has
run other related businesses from Oulu and has found it to
be a very good place for his line of work.
‘There is a very good scientific community here,’ he tells
me. ‘It’s not too big. So it’s small enough that you know
everybody but big enough that there’s a wide range of
research fields and an international atmosphere. Also there
is help setting up new companies through Oulutech for
example.’
Peter has also been very impressed by the general standard
of living in the city.
‘There is a very high standard of living, the cultural life
is very good for a medium sized city, education
possibilities are very good . . . good house prices . . .
and the sports facilities are excellent!’
Peter is a huge fan of cross-country skiing and
orienteering. But, that said, he thinks that Oulu could
really help business like his by establishing a ‘laboratory
service centre for young, start-up companies in the
biobusiness.’
Adjusting to the Language
Business aside, there has been some adjustments to be
made for the forty-five year-old father of three over the
last seven years.
‘I had to adjust to the language,’ he tells me. When he was
a researcher in Stockholm he’d found that – as a German
native speaker – he could pretty much understand everything.
‘It all went quite smoothly,’ he recalled.
However, when he got to Oulu in 2000 ‘there was almost
nothing in English! Though being able to speak Swedish was
helpful.’
As the departmental meetings, which he must attend, are in
Finnish – which he has not managed to learn – ‘I can’t
really influence the politics of the department . . . so I
just concentrate on science. I read during the meeting’s
reports of my coworkers and evaluate manuscripts,’ he
laughs. ‘I use the time efficiently!’
Peter doesn’t miss that much about Germany any more as he’s
been in Oulu for seven years and had lived abroad before
that. In a way, though, he misses being positioned in
central Europe.
‘Oulu is on the outside of Europe,’ he tells me. ‘You
therefore have to make twice the effort to make and keep
contacts.’ He also wishes that he could fly back to Germany
more easily with family. ‘I can’t wait until cheap flights
come to Oulu!’ he laughs.
‘Demanding’ Students
Peter has also found some of his Finnish students
somewhat more self-confident than many German students. He
smiles as he remembers a particular example of an especially
demanding female undergraduate engineering student.
She came to me and informed me that she would like to do her
diploma work with a biotechnology company in Lapland saying,
“If you would have any ideas . . . ”’
Peter wasn’t aware of many biotechnology companies in
Lapland but he remembered an earlier collaboration with one
of the Finnish breweries and suggested that the student go
there with an ‘electrical chip reader’ which measures
bacteria levels. Surprisingly, the student managed by
herself to organise her financial support for the diploma
work with this company and even succeeded in obtaining a
research contract for the laboratory.
Peter then takes me down the laboratory and shows me the
enormous robot that they use as part of their work with
micro-organisms. Enthusiastically, he explains to me exactly
how it works and explains that the City of Oulu gave his
department substantial support to purchase it. Apparently,
though, it doesn’t have a name and is simply known as ‘the
robot.’
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