The heart of Europe's biotech sector: upper Rhine Valley provides ideal vistas and collaboration between industry academia.

More than 5,000 scientists with higher academic degrees work in public research in Europe's Upper Rhine valley, making this area one of the highest densities of life sciences-related research in the world. Now, the triangle region from Basel, Switzerland, in the south to Strasbourg, France, and Freiburg, Germany, in the north is striving to become the European heart of the biotechnology sector.

The Dreilandereck or la Regio, as the region is called locally, has a lot going for it: excellent molecular biology research at over 40 institutes, five Nobel prizes in chemistry, immunology, and genetics, and four universities with 10,000 students in the life sciences. In addition, 40% of the world's …