There’s a reason Biopôle is based in the canton of Vaud, just a ten-minute metro ride away from Lausanne’s city centre. An innovation hotspot, Vaud is the epicentre of research and development in Switzerland, and with its thriving life sciences sector, it has become an integral part of Switzerland’s Health Valley. For ambitious life sciences companies, there’s no better place to be.
In recent years, Switzerland has firmly established itself as the European centre of life sciences: the life sciences sector is Switzerland’s largest export industry, accounting for 38.5% of total Swiss exports and contributing CHF 105.5 billion to the foreign export trade, according to the latest figures from Swiss Biotech.
Indeed, as reported by Startup Genome, start-ups across Switzerland raised CHF 2.9 billion (equating to US$3.3 billion) of investment in 2023 alone, but funding for medtech and biotech start-ups saw a record increase of 41% year-on-year, garnering US$646 million in venture capital in 2023. Thus, according to calculations by McKinsey & Company, Switzerland now ranks first in Europe in terms of biotech companies per capita and third for funding per company. To further contextualise this, the funds raised by Swiss biotechs represent a 14% share of the US$4.5 billion raised by the Europe-wide industry in 2023, despite Switzerland representing less than 3% of the European population. This significant disparity underscores Switzerland’s outsized impact in the sector.
The city is home to three of the world’s leading universities, which conduct groundbreaking life sciences research: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). They are not alone: the Hospitality School Lausanne (EHL), the IMD Business School and several institutes of the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland also attract and educate talented students from all over the world.
In addition, specialised centres like AGORA, ISREC and Ludwig Cancer Research are pioneering work in oncology, immunology and personalised medicine.
The canton of Vaud is part of western Switzerland’s Health Valley, a cluster of life sciences companies, research centres and innovation support structures, situated at the geographical, technological and economic crossroads of European markets. While Basel has historically been the Swiss hotspot for biotech and pharma, thanks to the presence of leading multinationals Roche and Novartis, Vaud has emerged in recent years as a new hub for innovation in life sciences. In fact, in 2024, the Greater Lausanne Region ranked as the 11th most important start-up ecosystem in the world.
Vaud is now home to almost 2,000 technology businesses and 400 research laboratories employing 25,000 talented people, while life sciences start-ups in the canton have raised more than CHF 1.4 billion in investment since 2016. Indeed, together with Zurich, the canton of Vaud accounted for around 70% of all start-up investment in Switzerland in the past two years, as reported by Startupticker.
In such a vibrant innovation hotspot, it’s no surprise that a constant stream of start-ups and over 60 overseas companies, including Medtronic and BD, have chosen to develop their operations here.
