CEO Update: Monday 16 April

We kicked off last week with the release of our latest quarterly biotech financing update, produced with our data partner Informa Pharma Intelligence. The report, which looks at the sector’s finance data between December 2017 and February 2018, shows that venture capital financing and follow on financing on the public markets are off to a solid start in 2018. It’s great to see UK biotech companies starting the year with some strong fundraisings, including some great outcomes for BIA member companies such as Orchard Therapeutics and GW Pharma. We look forward to tracking the trends for UK biotech financing throughout these quarterly updates in 2018.

Wednesday was World Parkinson’s Day, and we marked the occasion with a London Networking Breakfast themed around new patient-centric funding models for accelerating cures. We had a great turnout, with over 100 attendees from across the sector, and we heard from a fantastic selection of speakers from the AMRC, LifeArc, the Dementia Discovery Fund, and BIA’s Charity of the Year Parkinson’s UK. We’ll be releasing a blog on the event later this week for those who weren’t able to attend. 

Staying with Parkinson’s, the BIA team is training hard at the moment in preparation for the Tough Mudder race at the end of this month to raise money for Parkinson’s UK. Our goal is to raise £2,000 so please show your support by donating to this fantastic cause.

Last week also saw the release of a new report from the CBI outlining where British businesses want to stay close to EU rules and where they want divergence. For our sector, the report echoes our view that it is vital that regulatory alignment for medicines is a priority in the Brexit negotiations. This is imperative to protect public health by ensuring that the supply chain, from discovery and development to reaching patients on both sides of the channel, is not disrupted.

For more on Brexit, on Friday I’ll be giving the latest Brexit briefing webinar in our monthly series. I’ll be providing an update on Government policy, progress of working groups, and how these potentially affect companies in life sciences. We’ve had a fantastic turn out for these webinars and have been getting great feedback, so make sure to tune in. You can register here and watch previous months’ webinars on our YouTube channel.

We also have the first webinar in our new finance series taking place on Tuesday the 1st of May. This webinar, entitled ‘Introducing the Broker’, will involve a corporate financier, a salesperson and an analyst discussing their roles and answering key questions from the world of finance. Make sure to register here.

Finally, some of you may have received a ‘spoof’ email last week purporting to come from me, it was malicious and I hope you ignored and deleted it. We have put measures in place to rectify the situation and minimise the impact so thank you for bearing with us and our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best,
Steve.