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It is more than five years since the Bioscience Innovation & Growth Team (BIGT) published ‘Bioscience 2015’ ? a report setting out a vision for the UK’s medical bioscience sector in the year 2015. In January 2008 the Government, again in partnership with the BioIndustry Association (BIA), announced an independent review of Bioscience 2015 to ‘renew and refresh’ its aims and objectives. This has been carried out, once more, under the Chairmanship of Sir David Cooksey. BIGT Review and Refresh (BIGTR2) both measures progress made against the original Bioscience 2015 vision and identifies new ideas and proposals that could promote the future competitiveness of the UK medical bioscience sector.
The aim of Bioscience 2015 was to secure a leading place on the global stage for the UK’s medical bioscience industry, thereby improving the health and increasing the wealth of the nation. A strong clinical trials infrastructure and early access to innovative therapies would ensure the former, while the building of a high growth, high value, knowledge-based industry around a ‘critical mass’ of British companies in the mould of Amgen would secure the latter aim.

Therefore, Bioscience 2015 stated that the UK must create for itself;

○ a diverse and sustainable bioscience sector with a core of large, world-class companies, that would be second in size and achievement only to the US;
○ the most efficient and effective setting for conducting clinical trials in the world; and
○ a healthcare system, regulatory regime, and business environment that support innovation in bioscience, delivering early access to patients.

Bioscience 2015 coincided with the 50th anniversary of the publication of the structure of DNA, with a flood of media pieces on genes, genetics and biotechnology fuelling a mood of great optimism about the sector’s future. Added to this were continuing expectations on what the Human Genome Project, announced in 2000, could deliver for human health.

We could not, however, have anticipated how financial conditions would worsen in the years to come, with investors becoming increasingly reluctant to invest in emerging bioscience companies and the public markets all but closing down. Neither Government nor the bioscience industry (biotechnology and pharmaceutical) has been able to prevent this financial freeze. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry faces its own issues with a patent ‘cliff’ equivalent to $140 billion in sales as several blockbusters come off patent over the next few years, and an increasing recognition that it must look to third parties to help replenish its pipeline.