My blog last week discussed how the UK government was looking at new ways of supporting the country’s biotech industry and the attitudes of attendees at a meeting held in Cambridge, one of the leading biotech centres in the world, to the proposals. There was some scepticism expressed about how successful the Office for Life Sciences would be: it’s obvious that people have very varied views of what the problems and priorities are and how they should be dealt with.
However, that said, it’s been good to see that The BioIndustry Association, the UK trade association for biosciences, has in general been highly receptive to the OLS proposals. The Association’s most recent statement comments on the OLS proposals for regenerative medicine, saying that the recently announced funding for this area “will help the UK capitalise fully on its leading global position in regenerative medicine.” Of course, the BIA was one of the bodies that was consulted by the OLS in shaping its proposals, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the proposals have been welcomed by the BIA and satisfy its expectations. To be consulted doesn’t necessarily mean your recommendations will be acted upon.
Regenerative medicine is just one of the areas of biotech that the UK government has looked at. I’ve previously described other areas examined by the OLS, and one of the most important is continued support for biomanufacturing. The UK government is still active in this area too: it recently announced funding of new facilities for industrial biotechnology at the National Industrial Biotechnology Facility at the Centre for Process Innovation’s campus at Wilton in the North-East of England. This is in response to the industry pressing for facilities larger in scale than the testing facilities at the NIBF in order to ensure the future development of industrial biotechnology.
It’s good to hear that government is listening to industry and making efforts to meet its requirements, but there’s still a lot of debate about whether the government is really supplying what the industry needs. The OLS consulted industry in depth before making its recommendations, but are senior executives in biotech and pharma convinced it can deliver the solutions? It’ll be interesting to see what emerges over the next few months as the OLS blueprint is put into effect.
