Assessment of the changes in the UK drug discovery landscape (2016)

CBSL and TBR were commissioned by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) to assess the changes in the early drug discovery ecosystem of the last 5-10 years. The study looked at whether the perceived downsizing by large pharmaceutical companies has been real and to what extent this has affected the UK’s drug discovery capability. The project combined desk research, interviews with KOL’s and a telephone survey of 80 companies and institutions.

Click here to download The Changing UK Drug Discovery Landscape report as a pdf file.

Dr Neil Weir, Chair of the ABPI Innovation Board, and Senior Vice President of Discovery Research at UCB Pharma, said:

“This new report is an important baseline for understanding where the UK drug discovery landscape has come from, and where we are heading in the future.

Over the last ten years we have seen a shift away from science in a silo, to a more open collaborative approach that prioritises the pooling of talent, expertise, facilities and resource to support the discovery of new medicines.

No company can any longer develop great medicines alone, and the strength of UK academic science and technology is a vital asset to our industry, underpinning many of the new treatments and therapies that make the headlines today. Yet the shift towards multinational companies taking a global approach to investment – coupled with the current political and economic climate in the UK – mean that the status of the Britain as one of the leading lights in drug discovery can’t simply be guaranteed, and we should not take our eye off the ball.

This report should send a signal for all partners in drug discovery to continue to encourage collaboration, and ensure it is sufficiently resourced and invested in, so that patients in the UK remain best placed to reap from its rewards.”

Click here to view an infographic of the report based on the numbers

For more information on the report visit the ADPI website

Annual Economic Analysis of UK Life Science Industry sector (2009-2016)

CBSL has been working with the UK Government for over 6 years on surveying the life science sector annually to provide data and prepare the analysis for the Strength & Opportunity series of publications.

Click here to download the Strength and Opportunity 2015 pdf report

CSBL and its consortium partners collate data on over 4,000 UK life science companies, analysing data on segmentation, employment and finance to prepare a comprehensive view of the UK sector.

Industry demand analysis for services and facilities of a new healthcare innovation campus (2014 and updated 2016)

CBSL prepared an industry demand analysis to underpin the public/private investment case for a new healthcare innovation campus. The project was part of the strategic plans of a UK Top 10 University and supported the application for a >£10m public grant. The project involved combining desk and database data with interviews and an online questionnaire with companies to support the forecast of economic impact.

Assessment of the current and future skills needs in the UK Cell Therapy Sector (2015)

Working with our partner consultancy TBR, CBSL were commissioned by the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult (CTC) to assess the current skills gaps in the sector, to gather industry views on future needs and to make recommendations on how the CTC could work to address these gaps.

Support environment for drug R&D in the UK (2015)

CBSL worked with its partner to review the current support environment and to assess the impact that this has on drug development and the attractiveness of the UK as a location for investment. The outputs from the survey were a high level meeting of life science industry representatives and the Life Sciences Minister, George Freeman MP, organised by Reform on behalf of UCB Pharmaceuticals.

Strategic due diligence of spin-out in agri-tech (2014)

CBSL completed a due diligence analysis of the business case to investment in a new technology based on agri-tech to produce therapeutics using plants. Norwich Research Park Board required an analysis of a proposed public/private investment in a facility to allow commercialisation of the technology as a CMO business. The report was presented to the Board with recommendations on overall viability and areas for improvement.