CEO Update|Monday 20 April
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This week as a result of close work with the BIA, the Government unveils financial support for innovative UK firms, develops vaccine manufacturing and enables critical workers in UK life sciences firms to access the coronavirus national testing programme.
We are pleased that the Government has announced a COVID-19 financial support package for innovative R&D-intensive UK knowledge economy firms , including life sciences firms. We hope that the package will enable strong and innovative UK companies to weather the COVID-19 storm. The package includes a £250m investment ‘Future Fund’ providing convertible loans of between £125,000 and £5m for businesses, to be matched by at least the same amount from private investor(s). However, as we have seen with other COVID-19 schemes, the delivery is critical and we now need Innovate UK and the British Business Bank to get this money out to businesses as quickly as possible and ensure it reaches all the companies that need it. The £250m convertible loans scheme should be incredibly useful for British biotech companies seeking further rounds of funding during this challenging time.
We also welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that £750m will be available through grants and loans from Innovate UK for smaller companies focussing on R&D. This will not only be a lifeline for those facing an uncertain financial situation but will also help UK research and innovation to bounce back once the disruption has passed. However, the Treasury has not taken this opportunity to announce that R&D tax credit payments will be advanced, something for which the BIA has campaigned strongly and for which we will continue to push. This would provide companies with additional cash in the bank to see them through the disruption and would benefit companies across the sector, so we strongly urge government to bring forward this measure.
The announcement today follows several busy weeks of BIA campaigning and discussions with the Treasury and other parts of government on the impact of COVID-19 on biotech, and what support measures are needed. Thank you to all our members who have joined us in this important work. We will now be studying the detail of what has been announced and assessing whether it will reach all corners of our sector. As always, feedback from our members is crucial, so please contact Martin with your views or questions. Join us this Thursday 11am for our latest COVID-19 webinar where we will be analysing the latest announcements on government’s business support package and discussing the implications for BIA members.
At Friday’s government coronavirus briefing, Business Secretary, Alok Sharma announced the creation of a government-led vaccine taskforce, specifically referencing the work of the BIA, which will see academia and industry working together to rapidly develop a vaccine. The Government also announced a £14 million investment pot, available to 21 coronavirus-related projects to rapidly progress treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.
The BIA’s industry-led vaccine manufacturing group is central to these announcements, which we welcome. This is a fantastic example of how collaboration involving BIA members in the manufacturing community can pull together expertise at pace, and in this case work towards battling a global pandemic.
The taskforce has been working closely with Oxford University and Imperial College London, to assess supply chains and understand what they require to scale and rapidly deploy their vaccines. You may have seen Oxford University’s adenovirus vaccine candidate in the news over the weekend, which is due to begin clinical testing in humans this week.
It was very good to hear that our sector has now been prioritised in the Coronavirus National Testing Programme. The DHSC has confirmed that the list of those eligible for testing now includes medical supply workers. For our sector, this includes employees working in critical medicines, vaccines and medical devices, where those staff are self-isolating/symptomatic and where they can’t do their work from home.
It was a bumper week for webinars, Thursday kicked off with our weekly COVID-19 update. It was great to be joined by Versus Arthritis, the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on research charities and potential implications for future medical research. We upload all of our webinars onto our YouTube channel so if you have missed any please find them here.
Versus Arthritis, our Charity of the Year, is predicting an unprecedented drop in fundraising income of more than £3 million due to the coronavirus crisis. They have launched an urgent fundraising appeal to ensure that they can continue to support people with arthritis. To learn more about this appeal and to find out how you can contribute today, please contact Tess Cohen at [email protected].
Next, we had the Government and Trade Associations webinar with key guest speakers including Professor Sir John Bell who explained the science behind antibody testing. I was then honoured to provide the closing remarks on WuXi AppTech’s Online Forum at which global leaders discussed how we can learn from each other to tackle COVID-19. The pre-publication evaluation of antibody testing which John Bell referenced in the previous webinar is linked there.
As we get used to living in a more digital world, we are turning our regional events into webinars, and I am pleased to announce that we will be hosting a very informative webinar tomorrow at 9:30am focussed on seed funding and the Investor/CEO relationship. We have secured an excellent line up of CEOs with recent successful fundraises under their belts, coupled with some key investors in this space.
Today we have published ‘Influencing and shaping our sector’, our quarterly report, which highlights the changes we are seeing during this strange time. Our sector, like the rest of the world, looked very different at the beginning of this quarter compared to now. The update not only focusses on our COVID-19 work, but also on wins for the sector which the BIA has helped to bring about, such as the changes to the R&D tax credit PAYE cap.
