Insider and biocity hosted a biotech business breakfast at the new incubator in nottingham where the audience heard how to secure the UK's leading position in the sector read on....
The newest kid on the block to nurture and develop emerging biotechnology companies in the UK is BioCity.
Opened officially in September by science minister Lord Sainsbury, the new bioincubator, is home already to a number of promising companies that are on the leading-edge of scientific research.
Midlands Business Insider and BioCity hosted a biotech breakfast event in November, featuring Dr David Chiswell, chairman the Bioindustry Association, the trade association for innovative enterprises in the UK's bioscience sector. The timing of the event was fortuitous - Chiswell was able to report to the assembled academics, biotech entrepreneurs and finance professionals on the findings of the Government-backed Bioscience and Innovation Growth Team (BIGT) report, which had been released the week before. Chiswell is a member of the BIGT.
The BIGT, chaired by Sir David Cooksey of Advent Ventures, is the biggest policy review of the sector to date and follows months of consultation with more than 70 leading industry figures. The report provides a number of recommendations to the government on ways of securing the UK's leading position in the European bioscience sector.
Chiswell told the audience at the breakfast that the report's recommendations were required to overcome barriers to growth in the biotechnology industry. Some of the recommendations included the creation of a National Clinical Trials Agency (NCTA) to allow collaboration between the NHS - which is unique in providing a single gateway to its patient population - and industry. The report also calls for the development of bioprocessing centres of excellence. Bioprocessing covers all aspects of the production process that transform a lab-based drug candidate into a marketed biopharmaceutical and is a high-skill, knowledge-based activity. The report suggests investment into bioprocessing will prevent the shift in labour to lower cost centres.
Ambitously, the report also calls for new financial instruments to be made available to innovative companies in the biotech sector needing to raise further cash for investment. Chiswell explained that, in a cyclical industry such as biotech, companies are obliged to raise funds when the windows of opportunity exist on the public markets. This serves to limit access to much needed investment when investor confidence in the sector slumps. The report calls for amendment of the pre-emption guidelines to permit UK-listed life science companies to issue up to at least 20 per cent of their share capital on a non-pre-emptive basis during a rolling three-year period. This would bring regulation in line with the US, and would hugely benefit the growth and stability of smaller listed biotech companies.
The panel included Chris Barnett, director of the Research Support & Commercialisation Office, University of Nottingham and Dr Jamie Stuart, associate director of structured finance at Bank of Scotland.
"BioCity is an outstanding opportunity for us to really engage and drive forward the bioscience agenda in this region," said Barnett. "The opportunity is here, and the drive is here, and I look forward to making sure we deliver the opportunities in the future.
"If we look across the spectrum of strengths that exist within this region's universities, we have key strengths in the biomedical and genetics arena. We are looking at the tissue engineering strengths that are apparent and quite clearly recognised within the universities in the region and clearly the engineering strengths. If we start looking how we couple those together within the bioscience arena, I think you've probably got one of the most outstanding hubs of bioscience technology in the UK. We need to identify those nodes, we need to ensure we play to those strengths and deliver. We are starting to see outstanding companies come forward, for example Regentech, Oncimmune and Scancell. We have the opportunity, the strength is there, we just need to drive it."
Members of the audience were concerned about the low profile the East Midlands' biotech companies had amongst key private sector investors, whose attentions tended to focus on companies in the UK's biotech golden triangle - Oxford, Cambridge and London, which is home to six of Europe's top ten largest biotech companies.
Jamie Stuart, who was instrumental in providing finance for Pharmaceutical Profiles - a very successful biotech company spun out of the University of Nottingham - counselled patience. "A lot of it just needs time. Biotech is a big growth industry particularly for Nottinghamshire. There's no easy answer which says regional funding will become available, but it doesn't necessarily need to be regional funding. If venture capital in London realises that there are centres of excellence in Nottingham then maybe they will spend a bit more time coming up here and looking at the prospect."
Chiswell suggested that the emphasis placed on geography in England was not necessarily the case elsewhere. "Remember that Nottingham is only two hours by train from London. You've got to plug that a lot. In terms of the US, it is no great distance.
"You should spend more regional funds on promoting that fact that there are more companies here. And also, from a single investment point of view, they just need to know that they can get back in a day, and I agree they don't think they can. It seems silly. If you focus effort on changing minds like that - Silicon Valley is a good example, it is 700 miles long. People drive up and down it, so why not get as far as Nottingham?"
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