The Czech Republic is long on talent but short on cash to put its research into production. Charles Piggott reports on attempts to solve the problem.

It would be hard to find a better advert for the Czech Republic’s fledgling biotech sector than Marián Hajdúch, a researcher director at the Laboratory of Experimental Medicine in Olomouc. He knows that in Germany he could make 10 times his salary, yet he returned from postgraduate work in Canada to work in Moravia, famous for scientific research since Gregor Mendel laid the foundations of modern genetics 150 years ago.