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LEADER


Golden era? A


fter many years spent looking enviously across the Atlantic at the funding available to US biotech start-ups from eager venture capitalists, has the UK


biotech sector finally entered a ‘golden era’? According to a report produced by BioCity


Group, in collaboration with Young Company Fi- nance, with the growth in UK life science start-ups and the amount of funding raised, then it has. ‘The number of new research-focused


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companies formed in the five years to the end of 2016 reached 332, the highest level since we started collecting data in 2005 and 15% up on the post-financial crash low of the 2008-2012 period’, says the report. This growth, however, is not uniformly spread across the UK. ‘In the current study, 54% of start-ups were formed in London, the South East and East of England vs 44% in the 2006-2010 population [of start-ups]. ‘The North-West of England, Wales and


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Scotland also saw growth in the number of new life science companies being formed.’ Funding has always been a critical issue and in the past, individual venture capitalists were the main source of investment. However, they have been overtaken by life science innovation funds as the size of investments has grown. In the South East of the England, the report


notes that the Oxford Sciences Innovation Fund, founded in 2015 with an initial £350m and subsequently increased to £580m in 2016, has driven some of the expansion. This fund has backed 17 life science companies since its formation, while 12 such companies have been backed by Cambridge Innovation Capital, which was established in 2013 with an initial £50m, later increased by £75m in 2016. Such funds have been established elsewhere


in the UK, but the report notes that they do not have the capability to invest the tens of millions required in this sector. The increase in funding requirements is highlighted in the report, which noted that, in the 2011 population of start-ups, the top 20 raised £270m, while in the latest report, the top 20 raised £438m. In real terms of funding, around 74% of the


life science companies incorporated in the 2012- 2016 period have together secured £780m in equity investment, just over double that raised in 2010-2014 as previously reported by BioCity. ‘The three regions comprising the so-called ‘golden triangle’: London the South East and East, accounted for 86% of all total investment on 2012-2016,’ says the report, with each of these regions showing large increases. Although not at the same level, other regions that have seen


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significant increases include Scotland, Wales and the East Midlands. Meanwhile the South West, North East and Northern Ireland have all seen a decline. In terms of the split between medtech and


bio/pharma start-ups, the report highlights that it has remained fairly consistent over the past decade at around 40% medtech and 60% bio/ pharma, although again the pattern varies across the UK. ‘In the East of England three quarters of start-ups are operating in the bio/pharma space, with about 30% of those developing large molecule/antibody therapeutics, around 30% providing discovery and development services and 15% developing small molecule therapeutics or re-purposing existing drugs. ‘In London, the North-West and the West Midlands, over 50% of the companies operate in the medtech field – an area that includes diagnostics, healthtech and medical devices.’ The growth in the total number of start-ups


is more than accounted for by the increase in the number of university spin-outs. ‘The number of spin-outs from universities continues on an upward trend with nearly 50% of all life science start-ups arising from academic centres,’ says the report. The trend is led by Oxford University with 27 life science spin-outs, followed by Cambridge University with 16. ‘Both these institutions have seen a dramatic increase in spin-out activity since our 2011 report, says the BioCity report. ‘Since then Oxford has doubled, and Cambridge has quadrupled, the number of life science formed.’ Other leading spin-out universities showing major growth include University College London, Strathclyde and Swansea, as well as Manchester, Imperial College, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Kings College. University spin-outs are based on the quality and breadth of research, which in turn is dependent on funding. The BioCity report has a veiled warning about the potential loss of EU funding as a result of Brexit. UK universities are ‘significant beneficiaries of EU funding, with over one third of all EU research funding to the top 50 European Higher Educational Establishments (HEIs) going to UK institutions. ‘Although this is not all destined for life science research, a significant share will be and losing this could impact spin-out levels in years to come,’ says the report. Could Brexit see an end to this golden era for life science start-ups?


© Society of Chemical Industry 2018 ISSN [print] 0009-3068. ISSN [online] 2047-6329 Views expressed in this issue do not necessarily reflect those of SCI or C&I


4 02 | 2018


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