The UK government has laid out a plan to become the leading life sciences power in Europe by 2030, but the pharma industry has already warned that it will fail without reforms to medicine funding and pricing.
The plan – backed with a £2 billion ($2.68 billion) funding pledge – revolves around three overarching objectives, namely strengthening science and discovery, making the UK a leading location to start and scale up new biotech companies, and driving health innovation through reforms to the NHS.
This will be achieved through a £600 million investment in unlocking the potential of NHS data as a resource to discover new treatments, reducing the red tape that holds back clinical trials, and developing manufacturing skills and capacity with an additional £520 million in funding.
Other pillars of the plan include unspecified additional funding for the UK drugs regulator, the MHRA, to streamline reviews so medicines can get to patients more quickly, the previously announced NHS ‘passport’ to roll out digital technologies more quickly, and government help for companies trying to raise investment and grow in the UK.
The government said it wants to forge at least one major industry partnership per year, along the lines of earlier agreements with Moderna and BioNTech.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the 10-year life sciences plan “will cut red tape and deliver the investment we funded at the Spending Review so it can stay ahead of the curve globally and we can reap the economic rewards for years to come.”
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) had a less positive assessment, however, arguing that the plan will fail unless the government commits to investing more in new medicines.
The pharma industry has complained for many years about the low spending on medicines in the UK relative to its peers in Europe, pointing out that around 9% of the NHS budget goes on medicines, compared to 17% in Germany and Italy and 15% in France.
Added to that, there is intense anger about recent steep rises in the rebates that drugmakers have to pay on the sales of newer products to the NHS, currently the subject of intense negotiations between industry representatives and the government.
“The solutions proposed are necessary and important, but they are not enough to turn around the UK’s decline,” said ABPI chief executive Richard Torbett.
“The UK must address the core issue holding back the life sciences sector, the long-term disinvestment in innovative medicines that is increasingly preventing NHS patients from accessing medications that are available in other countries.”
Dr Daniel Mahoney, the chair of the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) which generally represents smaller biotech startups, struck a somewhat more positive tone, saying the plan “is right to focus on getting substantially more public and private investment in early-stage companies,” welcoming in particular the focus on unlocking pension funds to increase investment in scaling life science companies,
There were also warm words from GSK, with chief scientific officer Dr Tony Wood saying he was pleased by reforms to incentivise more UK clinical trials, establish the previously announced Health Data Research Service, and create a network of translational labs and clinics to accelerate drug discovery and development.
A spokesperson for AstraZeneca, which has been critical of the recent decision to reject NHS use of one of its breast cancer drugs and the high rebates that have to be paid by pharma manufacturers – and recently backtracked on a plan to build a new facility in the UK – gave a somewhat more guarded response.
“The government is right to prioritise the life sciences sector, which can be a driving force for public health and growth,” they said. “We look forward to working with the government to ensure patients in the UK benefit from the discovery efforts of the life sciences sector.”
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