26 February 2019

Life Sciences Industrial Strategy & Sector Deal Update| February 2019

Life Sciences Industrial Strategy & Sector Deal

Welcome to the February Life Sciences Industrial Strategy & Sector Deal Update. Following the announcement of Sector Deal 2, we wanted to share with you a brief summary of the key commitments made by both industry and government, details of the new NHS Long Term Plan and a round-up of the latest news on the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

The second Life Sciences Sector Deal was published in December 2018, with £1.2 billion of new investment announced as part of the deal, including a major £1bn commitment from UCB, that will further strengthen the UK as a world-leading science base.

The UK Life Sciences Story

The life sciences sector is critical to the UK’s health and economy, contributing over £70 billion a year to the economy and 240,000 jobs across the country; despite already having the most productive science base in the G7, the UK sector continues to grow. Government continues to be ambitious in its plans for the UK’s future, ensuring we continue to grow and develop cutting-edge technology and new innovations. This is reflected in the government’s endorsement of Sir John Bell’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy through both Sector Deal 1 and 2 that demonstrate how collaboration between government and industry can ensure that the UK maintains and grows its global leadership in life sciences. The second Life Sciences Sector Deal builds on the first, setting out the significant strengths of the UK sector and includes significant measures to ensure UK life sciences benefits from opportunities for future growth.

Sector Deal 2

On December 5, 2018, we published the second Life Sciences Sector Deal, which set out the considerable progress made on the implementation of the first Sector Deal, including in medicines manufacturing and advanced therapies infrastructure, building on the UK’s world-leading genomics assets, a new digital pathology and radiology programme, and on implementing the Accelerated Access Review and improving NHS access to innovation. Sir John Bell believes the new Life Sciences Sector Deal opens doors to transformative treatments that will save lives, allow us to live healthier lives for longer and diagnose disease at an earlier stage. Click to read his statement.

The second Deal contains a package of new announcements which set out further collaboration between government and the sector to realise the vision of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy. It includes additional measures to secure a global lead in the areas of greatest opportunity for the UK, in the fields of early detection of disease, genomics, digital technologies and data analytics. Wider policy measures on clinical research, regulation of innovative technologies, skills, and uptake of innovation in the NHS are reinforcing this package, addressing key aspects of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy and helping UK life sciences to flourish.

The second Deal strengthens the partnership between government, industry, universities and charities, and demonstrates the pivotal role of the NHS as a central delivery partner. Taken together, the two deals put in place the foundations for the future growth of life sciences in the UK, which will deliver huge benefits to the people of this country through a stronger economy and a stronger NHS.

Key Commitments

Ideas

Government is committed to raising the intensity of R&D spend to reach 2.4% of GDP in the UK by 2027. We are also setting the ambition to triple industry contract and collaborative R&D spend in the NHS to over £900m. UCB will invest up to £150-200m in a state-of-the-art global R&D hub – a commitment which totals around £1bn over 5 years and will support 650 jobs. Roche will invest a further £30m in the UK including 100 new highly-skilled jobs by 2020.
Government will commit up to £79m for the Accelerating Detection of Disease challenge, which is expected to leverage significant industry and charity matched funding from the life sciences sector. To deliver this challenge Professor Sir John Bell will bring together UKRI, leading health charities, industry and the NHS to build a world leading, first-of-its kind cohort of healthy participants to support research, early diagnosis, prevention and treatment across major diseases. We will invest a further £50m in our digital pathology & radiology programme to make this a truly national asset. In genomics, we will sequence at least one million whole genomes over the next five years, with a broader aspiration to reach 5 million genomic analyses in the same time-frame.
Government is also keen to strengthen the UK environment for clinical research by committing to further improve the speed and efficiency of clinical trials and develop policy actions to consolidate our world-leading position in delivering novel and innovative trials. This will be matched by new industry investments from Celgene and IQVIA in UK clinical research, including a new high throughput centre in the North of England to improve the speed and efficiency of study set-up and delivery. The Brain Tumour Charity will invest £2.8m in the Tessa Jowell BRAIN-MATRIX, a trial aimed at increasing opportunities for brain tumour patients to try non-standard treatments.

Business Environment

Government are committed to making the UK a global hub for advanced therapies manufacturing. A significant portion of the £146m ISCF support for medicines manufacturing announced in the first Sector Deal has been targeted at advanced therapies and the NHS Blood and Transplant will facilitate adoption of cell and gene therapies. This is supported by industry commitments with Autolus planning a £50m UK headquarters and UK companies Oxford BioMedica and Roslin Cell Therapies also planning to invest £19m and £4m in cell and gene therapies respectively.
Government will support the growth of life sciences manufacturing with £8m of Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) funding announced to facilitate the application of digitallyenabled technologies for medicines manufacturing and £121m announced for the Made Smarter Programme through ISCF wave 3. In response GW Pharmaceuticals have invested over £20m expanding its manufacturing facilities in Kent and Eli Lilly and Company have committed £5m to research into more efficient medicines manufacture, in collaboration with Imperial College London and UCL.
We are committed to improving UK environment for businesses to scale up by increasing opportunities for pension funds to invest in the sector, addressing regulatory barriers and helping them invest in growing UK businesses through the British Business Bank (BBB). Many of the UK’s largest pension providers will work with the British Business Bank to explore pooled investment in patient capital.
Work is being done to improve NHS innovation and collaboration by building a stronger innovation ecosystem through an enhanced Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC). We are continuing to improve patient access to innovation – the AAC will be given greater flexibility over the number of products it can support, providing they deliver good valueand by improving the infrastructure that underpins the AAC’s work. Industry have also shown their commitment with Smith and Nephew and Convatec investing over £20m in wound care research and Barts Health NHS Trust, Queen Mary University of London and other partners are working with DHSC to develop a major new life sciences hub in Whitechapel. Total investment is expected to reach £500m.
Government are also committed to developing innovative regulation with the MHRA setting out how it will be the most forward-thinking regulator by developing a framework for point-ofcare manufacture in advanced therapies manufacturing, developing a regulatory pathway for genomic medicines / tests and promoting patient access and safety.

Infrastructure

Government will support the UK’s health data infrastructure, including through investments to improve NHS Digital’s core services, and to develop the Local Health and Care Record Exemplars and Digital Innovation Hubs. We will ensure secure and appropriate use of patient data & create the right framework for commercial agreements involving data – improving outcomes for patients & the NHS.
Government is supporting and expanding digitally-enabled clinical research, with a vision to demonstrate an efficient and industry-friendly, England-wide clinical trials service for feasibility and eligibility. Industry is pioneering the use of digitally-enabled research in the UK and digital technologies through the ORION-4 trial partnership between the University of Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit, its Epidemiological Studies Unit and The Medicines Company.
The UK regulatory regime needs to keep pace with rapid technological developments. To harness the opportunities these developments present, a group of innovators will be invited to validate their algorithms on synthetic datasets created as part of MHRA’s Regulator Pioneer Fund project in order to ultimately prove the concept and act as a regulatory sandbox to help with product validation.

Places

Government will renew its offer of Life Sciences Opportunity Zone status to help areas raise their profile at an international level. We will work with the sector to make the landscape easier for investors to navigate. New industry partnerships are being developed across the devolved administrations and the English regions generating significant investment. Bruntwood and Legal & General Capital will provide significant investment of £360m in capital, property and intellectual assets to create the UK’s largest portfolio of science and technology assets in the Northern Powerhouse and Midlands Engine.

People

Government is facilitating greater flexibility on the apprenticeship levy to support the uptake of life sciences apprenticeship and are exploring a potential pilot with key partners to better enable SMEs in the sector to take on apprenticeships. We are also taking a range of further measures to develop the skills the sector needs by increasing uptake of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), through a new external working group, led by the Department for Education and new UKRI programmes that are helping to deliver on opportunities that emerge through joint working between life sciences and other disciplines.
The sector are also developing new joint programmes targeted at key skills needs, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) is supporting the British Science Association’s work to inspire young people about STEM through a competition around the Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges. The Science Industry Partnership (SIP), with key partners, including ABPI and the BioIndustry Association will lead and deliver a Life Sciences 2030 Skills Strategy. SIP is delivering on commitments to roll out regional approaches on skills, including apprenticeships uptake by building on the success of SIP Cambridge with a commitment to establish SIP Liverpool.

The NHS Long Term Plan

The publication of the NHS Long Term Plan represents brilliant news for the UK life sciences sector.
Following extensive work by OLS with NHS England, we are very pleased to see that the final version
‘supports the two Life Sciences Sector Deals and makes a firm commitment for the NHS to play its full
part in delivery. The following measures are closely tied with Sector Deal 2 and focus on:

Mainstreaming the use of new technology and a greater focus on NHS and industry collaboration: this will create new markets and new opportunities for UK healthtech innovators, many of whom are SMEs.
Speeding up the path from innovation to business-as-usual, spreading proven new techniques and technologies and reducing variation: this includes further leveraging of existing local networks funded through the ISCF e.g. the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), alongside a commitment to a new funding mandate for cost-saving health tech products in the NHS.
A shift towards prevention, the better use of patient data and capitalising on the UK’s strength in genomics: this includes 500,000 whole genomes being sequenced through the NHS Genomic Medicine Service by 2024, which will support the Health Secretary’s commitment to sequence at least 1 million whole genomes within the same timeframe.
The plan also includes commitments to begin to offer whole genome sequencing to seriously ill children and adults suffering from certain rare conditions during 2019. This will support the government’s wider focus on early diagnosis, as reflected in the £79m ISCF funding for an Accelerated Detection of Disease challenge. There is significant industry interest in this package of projects and the key companies will be reassured to see a formal NHS commitment to play their part in the Long-Term Plan.

Life Sciences Sector Deals Progress

Funding for next-generation digital healthcare. UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £5 million to develop new digital health products through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). The competition opens on 11 February 2019, and the deadline for applications is midday on 10 April 2019. This is part of the ISCF leading-edge healthcare challenge and supports delivery of the Accelerated Access Review – a key commitment in the first Life Sciences Sector Deal – by improving access to new technologies in the NHS, streamlining pathways and supporting SMEs.
Innovations get £3M boost to prove the potential of health data to transform lives. Ten sprint exemplar innovation projects are set to receive a share of £3 million government funding following a UK-wide competition. These are the first phase of delivering the Digital Innovation Hub programme, which is being led by HDR-UK and was first announced in Sector Deal 1. The exemplars will test the technical solutions required for Hubs.
Industrial strategy delivers new vaccines manufacturing centre to lead the fight against deadly disease. The UK’s first-ever dedicated Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre will ensure the UK life sciences industry remains at the forefront of worldwide efforts to tackle life-threatening diseases, including Ebola. The centre will be built in Oxford, creating more than 50 jobs in the local area. Government are delivering on our Sector Deal 1 commitment to support the growth of medicines manufacturing the through the £66m ISCF investment in the Vaccines Development & Manufacturing Centre.
Manufacturing of life-enhancing medicines boosted by government funding. Two programmes to help companies produce more medicines and get them to patients quicker have been given a multi-million-pound government boost. Companies in Northumberland, Oxford and London have been awarded £4.3 million funding to develop digital solutions, including artificial intelligence, which will streamline production of next-generation medicines. In a separate series of investments, delivering on the commitment made in the first Life Sciences Sector Deal, a further £3 million has been awarded to support the work of Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres in rolling out new cell and gene therapies across the NHS.
Artificial Intelligence to help save lives at five new technology centres. Patients are set to benefit from radical advances in medical technology using artificial intelligence to diagnose diseases at an earlier stage. The centres will use AI, an area the government is backing in its modern Industrial Strategy, to find new ways to speed up diagnosis of diseases to improve outcomes for patients. Based in Leeds, Oxford, Coventry, Glasgow and London – but each with partners across many parts of the UK – the centres will develop more intelligent analysis of medical imaging, leading to better clinical decisions for patients, and freeing more staff time for direct patient care in the NHS. In the first Life Sciences Sector Deal, government committed to work with companies to shape a programme of NHS and industry collaboration, backed by ISCF, to develop and demonstrate new solutions at scale. Establishing this network of centres demonstrates in practice how this can work in the NHS.
UK’s leading health organisations form Health Data Research Alliance to transform future health and care. The NHS in England, Scotland and Wales along with Health and Social Care Northern Ireland, NHS Digital, Genomics England, Health Data Research UK, Public Health England and Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) announced today that they will create a non-profit association to accelerate progress in medicine and health. This shows clear progress on the commitments made in the first and second Life Sciences Sector Deal’s to develop measures that will improve the UK’s health data infrastructure and make the UK the home of data-driven life sciences research and innovation, improving outcomes for patients and the NHS.

Announcements and Events

UK businesses urged to register for continued Horizon 2020 research funding. The UK Government has guaranteed that UK organisations and businesses who receive EU science and research funding will continue to do so even if we leave the EU without a deal at the end of March. UK businesses who benefit from research funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme should now register their project on the UK Research & Innovation online portal so they can continue to receive funding should the UK leave the EU with no deal. The UK has been a highly active and valued participant in the Framework Programmes to date; in Horizon 2020, we are a top five collaboration partner for each of the other 27 EU Member States. As the PM said in her speech on science and modern Industrial Strategy [21 May 2018] the UK would like the option to fully associate ourselves with the excellence-based European science and innovation programmes. We want to explore association to EU research and innovation programmes and would be prepared to make an appropriate financial contribution if we do participate.
Innovation in Medicines Manufacturing through Collaboration Event. This Innovate UK and Knowledge Transfer Network event is an opportunity to learn more about a selection of projects that have been funded to accelerate the development and manufacture of vital advanced therapies, medicines and vaccines. The day’s objective is to disseminate the results and innovations arising from these funded projects, and to enable this medicines manufacturing community to explore further opportunities for collaboration through networking.

Life Sciences Industrial Strategy & Sector Deal Update| February 2019