Harnessing living systems to treat living patients: this principle underpins the rapid growth of biomedicines in recent years, a momentum that has accelerated in France since 2021 through France BioLead. The organization brings together all stakeholders across the sector. Competitiveness, attractiveness, and sovereignty are among the major challenges ahead. Laurent Lafferrère, President of the association, provides an overview of a sector that aims to establish itself as a strategic pillar.
Décideurs. What is the role of France BioLead?
Laurent Lafferrère: France BioLead brings together the entire French biomedicine manufacturing sector. Officially launched in December 2022 under the auspices of the French government, the association unites stakeholders from academic research, biotech companies, pharmaceutical groups, CDMOs, and investors. This cross-sector approach gives it a unique position.
As a trusted third party, we facilitate connections that lead to scientific, technological, and industrial projects. We also serve as the voice of the sector directly with public authorities. Our objective is clear: to make French bioproduction a cornerstone of the future European biomedicines hub.
A few years ago, France was often described as lagging behind in bioproduction. Where does the country stand today?
The Covid crisis was a wake-up call. It highlighted the strategic importance of mastering not only therapeutic innovation but also industrial manufacturing capabilities.
Since 2021, a strong catch-up dynamic has been underway, particularly driven by the France 2030 investment plan. New facilities are being built and existing sites expanded. In Toulouse, the Just-Evotec Biologics site—recently acquired by Sandoz—has introduced innovative processes for antibody manufacturing.
From an academic perspective, France ranks among the top four European countries for bioproduction patent filings, which is a significant advantage. We are also seeing the emergence of industrial equipment champions such as Verdot, a chromatography specialist, and Pierre Guérin, a bioreactor manufacturer that supplies facilities including Samsung Biologics plants in South Korea.
Another example is Calipso Sensor, born from a consortium involving Capgemini, Sanofi, CEA-Leti, and CentraleSupélec, which will launch an innovative sensor next year for monitoring biomedicine manufacturing processes.
“France ranks among the top four European countries for bioproduction patent filings.”
In the face of intense global competition, how do you assess the situation?
The United States maintains a significant lead thanks to its financial strength, risk appetite, and speed of execution. It accounts for 45% of the global market, making it an unparalleled center of attraction.
China, meanwhile, is responsible for nearly 40% of global clinical trials and is rapidly increasing its industrial investments.
Against this backdrop, our main challenges relate to access to private financing, talent attraction, regulatory agility, and our collective ability to transform scientific innovations into sustainable industrial capabilities.
For this reason, I have high hopes for the Biotech Act currently under review within the European Union. We will also need regulatory stability. Investment cycles are long, and they must align with durable and predictable regulatory frameworks.
What is your roadmap for the coming years?
Our ambitions rest on three pillars: competitiveness, attractiveness, and resilience.
On competitiveness, we have mobilized more than 115 academic and industrial experts to identify R&D priorities, technological barriers, and industrial needs across different categories of biomedicines.
On attractiveness, bioproduction suffers from a real visibility deficit. Our communication campaigns, particularly on social media, are beginning to bear fruit. We are especially targeting high-demand professions such as bioproduction technicians, qualified pharmacists, and bioprocess engineers.
The National Bioproduction Day—whose third edition has just taken place—brought together more than 65 events across France, 400 organizations, and 3,000 visitors during its first two editions.
As for industrial resilience, the objective is to secure value chains and contribute to a more agile regulatory framework. This includes promoting biosimilars, which should increasingly be viewed as an industrial opportunity rather than merely a tool for controlling healthcare spending.
What examples concretely demonstrate these advances?
In vivo CAR-T therapies perfectly illustrate what the sector is capable of producing.
The principle is straightforward: a patient's cells are collected, genetically modified, expanded in the laboratory, and then reinfused into the patient. This promising therapy, particularly for treating lymphomas, is expected to be significantly less expensive to produce than current treatments.
This represents a major breakthrough for the long-term sustainability of healthcare systems.
It is also symptomatic of a broader reality: biotherapies now account for 60% of medicines under development. They will play an increasingly important role in treating cancers, autoimmune diseases, and rare diseases, of which nearly 7,000 different forms have been identified.
“Healthcare is still too often viewed as a cost, whereas it represents a strategic investment from health, technological, and economic perspectives.”
The cost of these medicines is the subject of considerable debate. What financing challenges do you see within the French healthcare system?
Biomedicines are complex to develop and manufacture, which is reflected in their cost. Process innovation is a crucial lever for controlling these costs over the long term.
However, the fundamental issue lies elsewhere: healthcare is still too often perceived as an expense when it should be regarded as a strategic investment from health, technological, and economic standpoints.
Current geopolitical developments only reinforce the importance of controlling one's own value chain.
What role should biosimilars play?
Biosimilars are too often viewed merely as a budget-balancing mechanism. Yet they could improve patient access to treatment and help finance innovative therapies.
From an industrial perspective, they also represent an opportunity to strengthen the French and European manufacturing base.
However, this requires alignment among all stakeholders—from public authorities to patients and prescribers. It also means improving competitiveness in manufacturing processes, digitalization, automation, and quality control.
The bioproduction sector already employs 76,000 people in France, nearly 30% of whom work directly in manufacturing. It lies at the heart of our ability to care for our population and control healthcare spending—so much so that it should be considered as strategically important as national defense.