U.K. officials ready $286M fund to fuel a biotech revival

Posted under Biotech Venture Capital, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Europe, Funding, Index Ventures, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Sir Christopher Evans, Startups, United Kingdom, Universities, Videos, Wellcome Trust by john

U.K. officials are preparing for the imminent launch of a $286 million fund designed to revive the country's biotech industry, adding to a number of new financing initiatives that promise to pump cash to developers making a perilous journey through the "valley of death."

Dubbed the Biomedical Catalyst, the new fund will be operated by the Medical Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board. And it has gained an influential supporter in Prime Minister David Cameron, who's become a champion of the life sciences sector since his move into 10 Downing Street.

"The U.K. boasts a world-leading life sciences sector, which is changing at an incredible pace," says Cameron. "And I'm absolutely committed to helping it widen its significant foothold in the global market."

The new fund has a broad mandate to support small- and medium-sized companies as well as academics in preclinical or clinical development. They can qualify for £150,000 ($238,613) feasibility awards to £3 million ($4.8 million) for early- and late-stage awards. Companies can be working on drug development, diagnostics, devices as well as other technologies in the field.

"We … welcome the fact that, while the U.K. government's initial focus for the fund was on helping early-stage companies, its scope has now been widened to include late-stage businesses," says Scott Johnstone, chief executive of the Scottish Lifesciences Association. "We lobbied hard for that change, and we are delighted to see our arguments being accepted."

After years of complaints over a dearth of support for the biotech industry, the U.K. has been rewarded with a number of innovative new funding efforts. The Wellcome Trust has engineered a substantial new fund while Sir Chris Evans (photo) has been working at gaining government cash to back new ventures in Wales. Index Ventures, meanwhile, has joined with GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) and Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) on a new fund for startups, primarily in Europe.

- get the story from BusinessWeekly
- here's the report from The Scotsman

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U.K. charities campaign to modify pricey regs in trials directive

Posted under Blog, Cancer Research UK, Clinical Trials, Companies, Diagnostics, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, United Kingdom, Universities, Videos by John Carroll

A group of charities in the U.K. is spearheading an effort to modify the EU's Clinical Trials Directive, a set of regulations which was intended to improve the safety of drug studies and which critics maintain has driven up the cost of studies and threatened to wipe out the drug research business in Europe.

According to The Telegraph, Cancer Research UK has joined a coalition that insists the directive created a battery of onerous regulations which significantly added to the cost of research without doing anything to improve safety.

"We are driving a Rolls Royce organization down a cart track, in terms of the bureaucracy and impediments that we have to overcome along the way," Cancer Research UK chief clinician Professor Peter Johnson tells the British newspaper. "The directive has just about doubled our costs for maintaining a portfolio of trials, because the cost of manpower pretty much doubled."

As an example, Johnson cites how requirements on reporting every adverse effect in a study prevented investigators from setting out to determine whether a common nutrient--with a clear safety profile--should be added to a cancer treatment. And with the number of clinical trials in the U.K. dwindling as the drug R&D industry finds itself being slashed by Big Pharma, the critics maintain that lawmakers need to act now, before the clinical trial business in Europe finds itself outsourced entirely to other, less expensive, regions of the world.

The group may have picked a poor example to make their case, though. Even if nutrients or other additives with a clear safety profile may get a pass on some of the regulations in the directive, it's unlikely that developers would be allowed to do a study of any new drug or drug combo without being required to report on adverse events. Modifying the directive in that one respect may do little to bring down the cost of any true drug study.

- here's the story from The Telegraph

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UK offering $280M catalyst fund, patient data access for biotech R&D

Posted under Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, United Kingdom, Universities, Videos by John Carroll

The UK's conservative PM is offering the country's swooning biotech industry a shot in the arm today. In what is being billed as a major new initiative, David Cameron is pledging $280 million to support a "biomedical catalyst fund" to back early-stage academic and biotech R&D at small and medium-sized development outfits. And he's vowing to speed up access to experimental drugs while putting the country's massive NHS database to use for drug development efforts.

The idea of providing patient data to biopharma companies immediately drew political flak from the opposition, which called it a violation of patients' privacy. But Sarah Chan, deputy director of Manchester University's institute for science, ethics and innovations, quickly shrugged off the notion.

"The wealth of data collected by the NHS represents a vast and potentially very valuable resource that could be used to facilitate highly beneficial research. The concerns over privacy and confidentiality...are perhaps overblown," she noted to Reuters. "As I understand it, the data that is to be released will be anonymized, and so cannot be used to target individual patients."

"The most crucial, fundamental thing we're doing is opening up the NHS to new ideas," Cameron plans to say, according to the Guardian. "I want the great discoveries of the next decade happening in British labs, the new technologies born in British startups."

Over the past year, the UK's substantial R&D industry has had to weather a number of setbacks, most significantly Pfizer's ($PFE) plans to close its big hub in Sandwich, Kent. Those setbacks, though, helped set the stage for today's new initiative.

- read the Reuters story
- here's the article from The Guardian

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