For the fifth consecutive year the UKTI team in Sweden organised a R&D Drug Development tour which brought together 16 UK research companies with players from the Swedish life science sector. This year, the tour moved away from Stockholm and emphasised other life science clusters such as the newly formed Medicon Village in Lund and Sahlgrenska Science Park in Gothenburg. Over the 2 day event the companies had 107 meetings.
The tour started off in Lund, where the 23 British delegates listened to presentations by Cristina Glad (Bioinvent AB), Åsa Sjöholm Timén (Spago Imaging AB) and Adam Bruce, founder of Tikomed, about the types of collaboration that they are looking for and explained their pipeline development. To facilitate clinical research in the UK Ravi Chana from the Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure (NOCRI) gave a presentation on what help they can offer both Swedish and UK companies.
The tour then continued to Gothenburg where Lars Wiklund, the British Honorary Consul, hosted a dinner, with lively discussions, covering the future of Contract Research Organisations, the role of governments and the public sector in promoting collaboration, as well as patent expiry in the sector.
On the final day, the UK delegation met with companies from the Sahlgrenska Science Park network. Mattias Rehnberg (AstraZeneca R&D) highlighted the outsourcing needs that are experienced by large pharma companies. At the same time, the Park Annual Life Science Conference took place, which gave the UK delegates the opportunity to meet with 350 life science companies from all over Sweden.
The follow up has just started but we can already reveal that UK companies have already secured direct business worth up to £900,000, with bright prospects for the future. Through this activity UKTI Sweden was not only able to generate inward investment leads and trade wins, but also to make a contribution to delivering on the UK government’s Life Science strategy.
