CEO Update: Monday 5 February 2018

Last week we released our latest quarterly report ‘Influencing and shaping our sector, BIA update October 2017 – January 2018’.  These quarterly updates give an overview of key policy developments and the BIA’s continued engagement with policymakers, regulatory authorities and wider stakeholders on behalf of the UK life sciences industry. This latest report, overviewing the last four months, covers our annual finance report, ongoing Brexit activity, the life sciences sector deal, the 14th annual bioProcess UK conference and much, much more. Do make sure to download it from the BIA website.

On Wednesday, the highly anticipated launch event for our new China Special Interest Group took place. We had an excellent turnout and heard BIA members Congenica, Oxford Nanopore, Innovate UK, the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, Kymab and McKinsey talk about their experiences selling, collaborating and obtaining investment in China. A productive discussion followed, with constructive ideas for how the China SIG should evolve into the future.

Staying with China, it was also encouraging to see the signing of a ‘memorandum of understanding’ on medicine and device regulation last week in Beijing as part of Prime Minister Theresa May’s visit to the country. The agreement between the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), pledges new areas of cooperation such as an exchange of learning from the accelerated access review (AAR) and how to effectively regulate the trading of medicines online.

Also on Wednesday, Labour Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth spoke at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) Conference about his vision for the NHS and pledged to make it “the most innovative health service in the world”. Ashworth stressed investments in new technologies is vital if the NHS is to be sustained, and argued that for this reasons, investing in the NHS should be part of the Industrial Strategy. He also highlighted the important role the life sciences have in driving this innovation and the contribution our sector makes to the economy. Labour is committed to create a £10bn National Innovation Fund which will seek to improve healthcare in the NHS through investments in innovative technologies. A transcript of the full speech is available here.

The BIA attended the Festival of Genomics last week, an annual event designed to offer insights and value for the full breadth of the genomics community – from academia, biopharma, healthcare organisations, investment firms, patient organisations and solution providers. BIA members Copngenica and Eagle Genomics were represented at the event as well as Oxford Nanopore, who provided a live demonstration of genome sequencing using their MinION. It was announced last week that Nanopore’s MinION was used to produce the most complete human genome assembled using a single technology - http://www.bio-itworld.com/2018/01/29/oxford-nanopore-minion-used-produce-most-complete-human-genome-assembly.asp

In other news, if you’re an Oxfordshire based organisation and think you’ve got an exciting product, process, service or business method, make sure to apply for The Oxford Science Park Innovation Award. The competition has helped previous winners to raise their profile enormously and is open to companies of any size, but it closes on March 2^nd so get your applications in soon.

In funding news, the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) and Innovate UK will be holding an engagement event in York to update companies, academics and organisations on the upcoming Medicines Manufacturing Challenge Fund Round 2 call of £10m. This workshop will take place on March 7^th and should be a great opportunity to hear the latest about this funding competition and how to maximise the chances of your proposal being successful.

And finally, on March 5^th we will be holding our inaugural Chief Medical Officer Summit at the Wellcome Collection in London. The summit aims to enable CMO and R&D executives to understand possible routes to raise capital, partner with big Pharma, address and support the skills required to be a CMO in a SME and create a network to share ideas, solutions and support. You can find out more about the event and buy your tickets here.

Best,

Steve.