- £600 million to grow life
science companies developing life saving treatments in the UK. - Prime Minister pledges to break
down barriers to commercialise our scientific discoveries in the UK. - Funding will create highly
productive jobs of tomorrow to develop life-saving therapies for many
diseases, from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.
The
UK’s health and life sciences sector will see a significant improvement in
their ability to commercialise and grow their discoveries in the UK, after the
Prime Minister announced a new cash injection to enable health and life science
companies to be able to scale up in the UK.
The
£200m Government cash injection will mobilise £400m of private investment to
allow science companies scale in the UK. The UK has many promising life
science companies, from Oxford Nanopore, which makes a pocket sized DNA
sequencer; to Immunocore, which is developing curative cancer therapies. This
investment will make it easier for these types of companies to raise capital to
run clinical trials, employ more industrial scientists and develop
manufacturing capabilities, so they can stay in the UK to grow and develop
their expertise.
Patients
in the UK will, in the future, have more of their life saving treatments
discovered, commercialised and made in the UK. The UK’s life science industry
is the UK’s most productive sector, contributing to 250,000 of the highest
value jobs across the country.
The
British Business Bank will launch a new dedicated fund to support the growth of
more UK-based cutting-edge health and life sciences companies by investing
long-term patient capital in the sector.
The
Prime Minister has made investing in science and technology a priority since
taking office. He recently announced another £200 million for the world’s
largest genetics project to sequence the genetic code of 500,000 UK patients.
Prime
Minister Boris Johnson said:
“The
UK has the best universities in the world and we have a proud history of
scientific discovery from penicillin to sequencing the human genome. But too
often we let another country commercialise this discovery. Today I am changing
that.
“We
must grow and commercialise of our amazing life science discoveries and grow
the companies in the UK. I want the lifesaving cancer treatments of tomorrow to
say ‘discovered and made in Britain’. That means allowing enough late stage
capital to be mobilised so that these science discoveries do not have to go
overseas to be commercialised.
“Over
60 years ago, we saw the discovery of DNA in Cambridge by a team of
international researchers and today we are going even further. However this
research was largely commercialised in California in a $40bn company based on
UK research. This must change.
“This
is part of my vision to have a vibrant post-Brexit economy fuelled by science
and technology. The life sciences is a key component of this and we must
continue to implement the life sciences industrial strategy.”
The
Government will develop a bespoke Life Sciences Scale-Up Fund of £200 million
which will encourage an increase in long-term private equity investment into
the scale-up of innovative life sciences companies.
The
new fund builds on the British Business Bank’s existing actions, which have
resulted in £120 million being invested in the life sciences sector. This will
ensure that UK health and life sciences companies are supported to achieve
their ambitions at every stage of growth.
We
will also deliver further measures to ensure that the UK builds on its role as
a leading centre for health and life sciences research and a global hub for
venture capital. We’re launching a new talent scheme of UK fund managers to attract
the best from around the world and providing new support to investors to help
them to navigate the UK health system and understand high priority areas for
investment.
ENDS
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