Spruiking for business the UK way

Developing partnerships with Australasian biotech companies is a serious goal for the UK delegation that attended last week’s annual AusBiotech meeting.

Representatives from UK Trade & Investment, London & Partners and the UK BioIndustry Association along with a delegation of 12 British companies were hard to miss with their red, white and blue stand in the middle of the exhibitor’s hall.

“Life sciences have had an increasing profile in the UK since the end of 2011,” said Jon Mowles, sector specialist with the London-based Life Science Investment Organisation that sits within the UK Government’s Trade and Investment department. “Our Prime Minister, David Cameron, speaks of the sector having the potential to be the ‘jewel in the crown’ for the country’s future.”

Along with the US, Japan, India, China and Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand are in the UK’s sights as potential partners for making Cameron’s vision a reality.

Mowles explained they have identified areas of strength the UK has in the life science arena, such as medical technology, experimental medicines and clinical trials, and dementia, and are proactively seeking to expand these areas.

“Companies that do make the move to the UK are given support to set up, grow and do business,” he said, “but the main aim is to bring investment into the UK.”

The UK environment is an attractive one with the corporate tax dropping to 20% next year - it was 28% three years ago. There is also the patent box incentive, which provides a 10% tax rate on qualifying revenues from patents, as well as an R&D tax concession that gives credit for what a company spends on R&D.

“Moving to the UK also gives companies access to European markets,” said Mowles.

To date, four Australasian companies have recently set up in the UK. Brisbane-based contract research organisation Clinical Network Services has set up an office in London and according to Mowles they are going well after only a few months.

Bioceptor, a Sydney-based outfit from the University of Sydney that collaborates with Cambridge University on a highly conserved cancer biomarker, has also made the move to the UK. A longer player on the UK scene, Izon Science, from the University of Otago in New Zealand, set up labs in the UK about a year ago to research a novel method for nanoparticle detection specific to biological samples.

A fourth outfit having made the move to the UK is Synthesis, a medicinal chemistry company from Melbourne, which also has a set-up in China.

But it’s not a one-way street, as the delegation at the meeting contests.

A number of British companies are making the move to Australia, mainly service providers in the drug development and pharmaceutical space.

“Some of these UK-based companies have analytical and technical skills and expertise they can offer to the Australian biotech sector, which hasn’t developed the same depth and experience in technical skills as yet,” said Joe Dodd, senior trade manager for UK Trade and Investment.

One company, Aesica Formulation Development, supplies approved pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and offers companies access to technologies to develop drugs.

Aesica is currently working with Sydney-based biotech QrX Pharma and recently signed an agreement to use their stealth beadlets for developing abuse-resistant drugs.

Other UK companies are making the move to collaborate with Australian researchers, such as Domainex, which is collaborating on drug discovery research projects with the aim of codeveloping products that can be taken through to the clinic.