PM launches Strategy for UK Life Sciences

This is John Preece reporting on the launch of the Strategy for UK Life Sciences, announced earlier today by Prime Minister David Cameron. You can read the full document on the BIS website, and the press release on NDS. Here’s what the Prime Minister had to say:

We can be proud of our past – but we cannot be complacent about our future. The industry is changing; not just year by year, but month by month. We must ensure that the UK stays ahead, yes, we’ve got a leading science base; we’ve got four of the world’s top ten universities; and, we have a National Health Service unlike any other. But these strengths alone are not enough to keep pace with what’s happening – we’ve got to change radically – the way we innovate, the way we collaborate, the way we open up the NHS.

The two reports we’re publishing today are testament to our ambition: not just to hang on in there with a significant foot-hold in the global market, but to take an even bigger share of that market in the years to come. I want the great discoveries of the next decade happening in British labs, the new technologies born in British start-ups.

The second report referred to is a review of innovation in the NHS and how it can rise to meet the challenges laid out in the strategy document. The new strategy is geared towards commercialising medical innovation and bringing research to market, and the key actions are:

• Invest £130 M in Stratified Medicine and £180 M in a Biomedical Catalyst Fund to support research discovery, development and commercialisation
• Invest up to £10 M per year in the Cell Therapy Technology and Innovation Centre
• Invest £25 M over five years in regenerative medicine through the Research Councils
• Invest £75 M in the European Bioinformatics Institute
• Create new partnerships in translational medicine and biopharmaceuticals between the UK and China
• Introduce a range of tax credits and support services for innovative SMEs
• Re-launch a Web-based clinical trials gateway
• Change the NHS Constitution so that all collected data can be used for research and patients can be contacted about research studies
• Develop a Bioresource for experimental medicine
• Appoint two independent Life Sciences Champions

International partnerships and collaborations are mentioned several times, and the following quotations (page 17) are particularly apt:

Clear leadership on the global stage to foster collaboration with internationally renowned partners is imperative if the UK is to be a real choice for investment.

In our forthcoming strategy on innovation and research we attach considerable significance to international collaboration.

In the context of the report, these collaborative initiatives are mostly geared towards improving trade, attracting investment and capturing international talent. However, as SIN has demonstrated several times in the past, scientific research and innovation partnerships are how we generate our world-leading scientific expertise in the first place. We hope to launch several UK-Canada projects on the life sciences in 2012 – watch this space!