Building momentum: how collaboration and investment are powering UK TechBio
TechBio UK 2025 brought together the brightest minds from across the innovation ecosystem — from investors and policymakers to founders and researchers. In this blog, Saq Lal, Head of Content at BIA, explores the key investor insights, policy priorities, and technological breakthroughs shaping the future of UK TechBio, revealing how collaboration, talent, and data are driving the sector from innovation to global endurance.
Investor insights and policy priorities
TechBio UK 2025 was a vibrant showcase of innovation, collaboration, and the talent driving the sector forward. The day kicked off with exclusive morning sessions: the TechBio Breakfast Club, led by Leigh Brody, Investment Manager, AlbionVC, offered investors a space to connect over discussions on opportunities and challenges in the sector, while a member-only policy session gave participants the chance to shape BIA’s priorities, discuss NHS and health data access, and explore how collaboration can accelerate the growth of UK TechBio. Conversations touched on patient trust, regulatory engagement, AI-driven analysis, and leveraging UK infrastructure to compete globally.
Keynotes: Discovery and data
Following this, Chris Gibson, CEO and Co-Founder, Recusion, delivered the opening keynote, setting the tone for a day focused on discovery, data, and impact. His talk highlighted the importance of building both technological and organisational capability to drive innovation across therapeutics, diagnostics, and deep biotech.
Roadblocks and funding realities
Two key panels added depth to the conversation. “What roadblocks remain for AI to be truly transformational?” explored the challenges of predictive modelling, data quality, and reproducibility. Founders highlighted that AI’s power is only as strong as the datasets feeding it, and deliberate, high-quality data generation is crucial, a point later echoed in Charlotte Deane, Executive Chair at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, EPSRC, closing keynote on OpenBind.
Meanwhile, “What do companies need to know to make themselves appealing for investors in 2025?” provided a realistic snapshot of the funding landscape. Panellists noted that while capital remains available, investors are increasingly risk-aware, favouring companies with clear proof-of-concept milestones, efficiency, and robust clinical evidence.
Innovation showcase
The afternoon was packed with track-based innovation showcases across three streams:
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Therapeutics and discovery – Companies including Coding Bio, Panakeia, Vitarka Therapeutics, and Genomics Limited presented advances in platform technologies and novel therapies, emphasising how they will transform patient care.
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Diagnostics and monitoring – Leaders like Ground Truth Labs, Curenetics, Tagomics, and Thymia explored real-world applications of diagnostics, demonstrating how data can validate impact at scale.
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Deep Biotech – Cellcraft, Ribbon Bio, Hulk Bio, New Wave Biotech, and MORF-Bio highlighted breakthroughs in AI, cellular therapy, and complex biological systems, showing how innovation can scale from lab to clinic.
Each track concluded with engaging panel discussions and Q&As, covering topics such as generating and interpreting high-quality data, real-world evidence, and enabling deployment at scale.
Ecosystem strength
The conference closed with a highlight: Charlotte Dean’s keynote on the OpenBind initiative. Charlotte shared how her team is combining large-scale data generation with AI modelling to predict protein-ligand interactions, making both methods and data openly available. It was a powerful reminder of how vision, collaboration, and smart data strategies can accelerate discovery in ways that benefit the entire sector.
TechBio UK also celebrated talent through poster competitions, highlighting innovative work in protein expression optimisation and other areas. Across sessions, from founders to investors, researchers to policymakers, the energy and engagement made it clear: the UK TechBio ecosystem has the talent, ambition, and collaborative spirit to lead in the years ahead.
Across the day, three key reflections stood out:
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Collaboration is critical: Bringing together academia, SMEs, regulators, and investors accelerates innovation in ways no single organisation can achieve.
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The UK has unique strengths: Despite being smaller than global hubs, the UK’s talent, infrastructure, and regulatory expertise position it to compete internationally.
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Talent drives impact: Poster competitions and founder showcases reminded us that people, their expertise, creativity, and resilience, are at the heart of every breakthrough.
From innovation to endurance
Ultimately, TechBio UK 2025 served as a powerful validation of the numbers released in the BIA's latest report: a sector that has attracted over £2.6 billion in total capital since 2020 is now ready for the next phase. The energy, the collaborative spirit, and the quality of the case studies demonstrated that the UK has the talent and the science to lead.
Our path forward is clear: we must now collectively address the 'scale-up gap' by mobilising domestic later-stage investment and ensuring robust health data infrastructure is in place, thereby converting this world-class innovation into global commercial endurance.