Life sciences players must do more to enable early-stage companies to expand and stay in the UK to create ecosystems that can compete on the global stage, according to industry experts.
That includes developing more manufacturing facilities, improving companies’ awareness of the need for more physical space, joining up specialisms in different regions and being braver about sharing data, panellists tell delegates in the EG Pavilion at MIPIM.
Tom Mellows, head of Savills Science, UK, Savills, says that after five years of rapid growth in the sector, everyone is “scrambling around” trying to work out how to support companies. However, neither real estate, academia or the government is “getting everything right”.
“I work closely with lots of VC-funded biotechs and I see all the challenges they go through on this journey towards commercialisation,” says Mellows. “They have all these things coming at them – challenges around venture capital funding, finding the right talent, getting through [regulatory] processes and requirements. These companies need lots of help.”
Olivia Drew, director and portfolio manager for UK life sciences at UBS, says the UK is a good place for early-stage R&D on the back of its strong academic sector. However, the sector needs to get better at “helping companies scale up and stay in the UK as they go through clinical trials and commercialise products”.
“We don’t want to lose out when it gets to that more advanced stage to countries like the US, which does a better job of supporting those larger companies,” says Drew.
Access to manufacturing space
Many early-stage life sciences companies do not understand how much physical space they will need to grow, comments Drew, especially in manufacturing.
“Companies realise they need manufacturing space quite late in the game,” she says. “Helping companies think about that earlier is important. That can be done across a host of institutions, be that universities, incubators, accelerator facilities and [programmes] like Catapult. It’s a whole ecosystem push, to help companies understand how they are going to manufacture their products.”
Jane Robinson, a professor and pro-vice chancellor for engagement and place at Newcastle University, agrees. “It’s about the pathway and helping to anticipate and remove the barriers to growth,” she says.
To help achieve this, the industry must work together to change the perception that rents or locations for bespoke manufacturing facilities are the same as those seen in the industrial sector, which Drew says is “absolutely not the case”.
Educating the sector on how a manufacturing space can be built flexibly, so that it can be relet easily, is another piece of the puzzle. Combined with supportive planning environments, that will help unlock “a huge area of growth”, according to Drew. Co-location between R&D and manufacturing locations is also viewed as essential to growing the latter, particularly in the advanced therapy space.
Taking time to reflect
Paul Singh, founder of project management consultancy EEDN and policy lead for SMEs at the City of London Corporation, emphasises the need for a period of data-sharing reflection. “The past few years have been kind of gung-ho,” he says.
“There has been a lot of data collected from speculative investments and clustering. As a life sciences ecosystem, we need to share that information, have that reset and [determine] where we are actually going with this, and how we achieve what we want.”
Canary Wharf Group and Kadans Science Partner’s 23-storey development is highlighted by Singh as a scheme that could help the industry understand whether such locations can produce successful clusters.
Singh adds that life sciences clusters could potentially aid footfall on high streets, by showcasing technology or AI concepts in underused retail locations to educate schoolchildren and the wider public. “There is no real appetite to repurpose retail spaces into labs… but by doing that, we could solve the problem of footfall and also promote the industry,” he says.
A united front
For Robinson, the UK’s position on the map for life sciences can be boosted if the ties between the regions are strengthened. That involves identifying opportunities for making those connections. Newcastle University’s reputation for its work on diagnostics and healthy ageing, for example, should link with other cities’ fields of expertise. In doing so, a “critical mass” is formed that can be pitched on a global stage.
“When we talk about what happens in the US, the scale is vast compared with what we can talk about,” says Robinson. “As a city, Newcastle… needs to be joining up with other places to be able to show how we can add value.
“We must focus on places where there are strengths, but also identify opportunities for making connections between those places if we are going to position this on a global stage.”
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