Sir John Bell at the UK Bioscience Forum

One of the many highlights of this year’s UK Bioscience Forum, held on October 12^th, was Sir John Bell’s keynote speech. To an audience of 300 delegates from the world of UK bioscience, he gave what felt like a State of the Union address for the sector, extolling our strengths and recognising where there are challenges. Having only recently written and launched his highly anticipated Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, Sir John had a wealth of relevant advice and insight to share with the bioscience community, so what were the key take-home messages from the speech?

Well, to start, there’s a lot to be proud of. The life sciences is the UK’s most productive major sector, and UK science productivity is the best of any country in the world. Moreover, we lead the world in genomics, a key field that continues to permeate and revolutionise every division of bioscience.

But while there is much to be proud of, Sir John was frank in making clear that there are several significant bottlenecks in the ecosystem that need to be addressed. The obvious bottleneck is a need for more funding – our science base is still underfunded compared to countries such as the US, Germany, France, and increasingly Asian nations such as China and South Korea. While our sector’s exceptional productivity allows us to do less with more, the government must step up its level of science funding if we are to continue to compete on global scale.  

Sir John also argued the need for a cultural shift in the ecosystem - a greater appetite for high-risk science, which is critical to ensure that we are the pioneers of future industries and are leading the world in new fields 20 years from now. A less conservative approach to investment would also allow start-ups to form and flourish, and would attract more talent from across the world to come to the UK to do exciting new science.

Better integration of the industry with the NHS is also vital, according to Sir John. At a time when the increasing costs of clinical trials are bankrupting the industry, improving their efficiency through dynamic integration of clinical trials with the healthcare system would be a huge boost for the sector. Having the NHS should be an enormous boon, but it has proved challenging to realise its potential for our industry.

So how would the UK life sciences ecosystem look in the future under Sir John’s strategy? He proposed that we should aim to have built four £20bn+ companies within 10 years, and attracted 10 significant large manufacturing facilities within five.

This will certainly require a huge and sustained effort from the sector, but as Sir John made clear, “Having the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy report written is not the objective – It is the beginning”.

To read the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy click here.

The BIA’s response to the strategy can be found here.