What is Medicon Valley

Medicon Valley is one of Europe's strongest life science clusters. It spans the Greater Copenhagen area in Denmark and the Skåne region of southern Sweden.

Since the mid-1990s a fast-paced development has been taking place, and today Medicon Valley comprises a dense cluster of universities, hospitals and companies within life science, biotech, medtech and pharma, many of which are R&D based.

The history of Medicon Valley
Biotech is far from new to the region - in fact, some regard it as the cradle of biotech, thanks to the groundbreaking research that took place at the Carlsberg Breweries in Copenhagen in the late 1800's. Furthermore, many of the region's universities have a strong heritage in biological and medical research and have produced several Nobel Prize winners. The almost century-long presence of a number of research-intensive and fully integrated pharmaceutical companies, such as Novo Nordisk, H. Lundbeck, AstraZeneca and LEO Pharma, has also contributed significantly to the development of the region by strengthening abilities within applied research, attracting suppliers and producing spin-offs.

In the mid-1990s the public authorities and the life science industry in Copenhagen and southern Sweden agreed to market the region internationally and to strive for a common goal: To be the most attractive bioregion in Europe.

Since 1997 Copenhagen Capacity and its Swedish counterpart Position Skåne have jointly branded the region as 'Medicon Valley' to reflect the region's life science strongholds, and today Medicon Valley attracts more FDI within life science than any other region in Europe.