Life sciences industry experts in Scotland have called on the private sector to support the sector’s growth, including by providing the right real estate.
Although the country has established research institutions, a culture of collaboration between academic and clinical researchers, and a track record of spinouts and start-ups, industry players argue that Scotland’s standing as a life sciences centre has yet to receive recognition nationally or internationally.
Speaking at The Scotsman’s Life Sciences Conference in Glasgow on Thursday, Deborah O’Neil, a biotechnology entrepreneur and chair of Opportunity North East, said: “We need to raise the region’s life science profile with investors, strategic partners and industry leaders, both from the UK and internationally.”
Speakers noted caution on the part of private investors and developers around the risks associated with delivery of R&D facilities in the region, accelerating a supply-demand imbalance.
Anna Dominiczak, a professor in the University of Glasgow’s college of medical, veterinary and life sciences, said: “We want [investors] to [have] high-risk appetite and share this high-risk appetite across Scottish government and ministers… If we don’t take risk we are not going to succeed.”
Mark Cook, co-chair of the Life Sciences Industry Leadership Group, added: “What’s absolutely critical is, if we are trying to stimulate the growth and the expansion of Scottish life sciences sector, there has to be appropriate places for people with great ideas to move into.
“If you are a somebody with a great idea or you are a two or three-person SME and you are trying to operate in isolation and don’t have people to ask around, you could be spending a lot of money and a lot of time on consultants, whereas if you were somewhere with a dedicated infrastructure, with like-minded peers all around you to share ideas and develop, you will do better.”
John Arthur, director of the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre at CPI, said the last big pharma plants to be built “have been built in Singapore, Ireland, Germany, US”. “We have to get good at getting them here,” he added.
“Manufacturing companies take enormous risk when they build something. They often build it before they actually need it, and sometimes they don’t even need it. So we have to really help companies to de-risk.”
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