CEO Update | Monday 23 September 2019

This week is European Biotech Week, a celebration of biotechnology with more than 130 events taking place in over 17 countries. The BIA will be playing its part to support this celebration, with a policy makers dinner in Brussels on Tuesday discussing how best to keep Europe wide collaboration in healthcare strong. In addition to this, on Thursday we are holding our Women in Biotech event in Cambridge to inspire, diversify and network our sector. Do read BIA Chair, Dr Jane Osbourn’s, blog for an insightful view on Women in Biotech.

Last Tuesday, we held our Regulatory Innovation Conference. It was great to see people from across the sector discussing the key issues in regulatory science including how we bring innovative medicines to market, the use of real-world data, and the role of the regulator as part of the global innovation ecosystem. To see the speakers slides from the conference, please follow this link.

On Brexit, with just 38 days to go till the latest no-deal deadline, the BIA is intensifying its communication and resources to assist businesses in their planning and preparations. We will go to weekly webinars from this Friday, have a special parallel track at the UK Bioscience Forum on October 17 and work with partners around the UK to deliver timely preparatory events from next week. Stand by for more details in the coming week.

You may have seen this recent coverage about preparedness for a no-deal, highlighting the issue of getting medicines to patients in the Daily Mail, Reuters and BBC News which may be of interest. 

I’m delighted to see that a very strong field of members have put themselves forward for election to the BIA’s Board. All the candidates’ profiles and the voting process for members’ reference are here.

There are four vacancies for Corporate members of the Board and one for Other members. This year, 14 colleagues have put themselves forward for election for the five positions. One way many member companies decide how to vote is to share the candidate profiles amongst senior colleagues at a team meeting before getting the primary contact to cast the company’s vote.  It would also be good to see as many of our members as possible at  the BIA AGM on 17 October, which is taking place after the UK Bioscience Forum and before the BIA’s Autumn Reception in The Waterloo Suite, County Hall, Belvedere Road, London SE1 7PB from 5.45pm to 6.15pm on Thursday 17 October 2019.

For more details and to register for either of these events, please click here.

Relations with China continue to strengthen, as UK companies see the opportunity of our newly forged links to Wuxi. In addition, last week I hosted Mr. Zhuang Jiahan, the Mayor of Xiamen Municipal People’s Government, Deputy Party Secretary of CPC Xiamen Municipal Committee. Xiamen is special economic zone, and a pilot city in China for the regional agglomeration of emerging industries in biomedicine, with a total output value of 58.9 billion yuan ($8.56 billion) in 2018.

It was incredibly exciting to see the continued interest in partnership with UK biotech shown by Chinese delegations. Chinese investors have shown renewed and reinvigorated focus in UK biotech with a number of deals announced in 2019. Chinese pharmaceutical companies are very active in seeking licensing deals for UK innovation. This has become a new form of funding possibility for UK biotech and comes from recent strengthened trade missions between the two countries.

Last Tuesday, the MHRA released an update on the strategy for Pharmacopoeial Public Quality Standards for Biological Medicines. The BIA and Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult organised an “MHRA Stakeholder Workshop – Analytical and Quality Standards for ATMPs” to enable the MHRA, through the British Pharmacopoeia (BP) and National Institute of Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), to inform and prioritise its standards work for advanced therapies, including the initiation of new standards identified through the workshop.
 

The quality of biological medicines is an increasingly important part of healthcare worldwide and is critical to delivering effective public health. These standards, regulated by the MHRA, help make sure biological medicines are of acceptable quality for use by patients.

The Public update: 2019 can be found here.

I mentioned last week that there was an announcement of seven new data hubs which will be led by Health Data Research UK (HDRUK). This leads us nicely to our video of the week, the live stream footage of the exciting announcement which explains what they are, who is involved and what they aim to do.

Best,