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【drug-news】英国报道显示初创企业渴望新的资金
By Nuala Moran
BioWorld International Correspondent
LONDON - UK biotech needs to find a new way of funding start-ups. Even before the current financial crisis, institutional investors had lost interest in the sector because returns are too long term and too uncertain.
Now action is needed from the government to provide tax incentives for investment in early stage companies and to secure the future of the sector, said a government-commissioned report published last week.
"Biotech companies have not provided the returns to encourage investors to keep on putting money in: it's to do with the whole UK investment community, which wants to be able to liquidate investments in relatively short order," David Cooksey, chairman of the industry team that compiled the report told BioWorld International. "But in biotech, we are talking about a time frame of 10 - 15 years to produce products for the market and companies with one or two products, and only a 1-in-15 chance that one of these will make it."
Cooksey's solution is to find ways of increasing financial collaboration between pharma and biotech, by giving pharmaceutical companies incentives to invest at an early stage. That endorsement will give other investors the faith they need to put in money, too, and the investment cycle will be shortened because pharmaceutical investors will buy up products early in development.
"Biotech has got to be seen as the feedstock for pharma," Cooksey said. "I do think pharma needs biotech more than ever before. If we can get biotech start-ups partially supported by pharma, expert investors will come back in. I still think we can have a successful industry."
That is the sobering conclusion from a report that was intended as a follow-up to consider progress made since an earlier - optimistic - report, Bioscience 2015, was published in 2003.
At that point, the UK boasted the second-biggest sector after the U.S. On the back of the 2003 report, several measures were put in place to build on that position and create a world-class, sustainable sector.
Now though, the latest report stated it was not possible to anticipate how financial conditions would worsen, with investors becoming increasingly reluctant to invest and the public markets all but closing down.
"In 2009, Bioscience 2015's original vision looks somewhat overoptimistic and in urgent need of this review and refresh," the report stated.
Many leading biotechnology companies have been taken over through sales or have failed. The original business model might have been to license a product to a pharmaceutical company, but more often the end result was that the whole company was sold. While those sales were often on attractive terms for investors, with so many companies exiting the market, it has not been possible for them to demonstrate a track record in successful and profitable product development that might encourage further investment. And with the IPO window now tightly closed, the influx of new companies coming on to the market has dwindled to zero.
Nor is the bleak financial position the only thing hampering UK biotech. Regulatory attitudes are making for a chilly climate, too. The report said, "Increasingly stringent regulatory demands have led to a slowdown of the UK product development pipeline." In particular, it blamed the UK health technology assessment body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), for creating another hurdle on the way to market.
"Added to this, there is resistance to change within the National Health Service (NHS), and the take-up of new medicines in the UK is slow," the report said, calling for an independent review of NICE's activities and remit.
A further regulatory barrier has been erected by the EU Clinical Trials Directive, which was intended to harmonize clinical trials activity across Europe. In the event, the report said the directive has had the opposite effect, with different member states implementing its requirements more, or less, stringently. As a result of those constraints, the UK's participation in global clinical trials dropped from 6 percent in 2002 to 2 percent in 2006.
Despite government action following publication of Bioscience 2015, the adoption of new therapies, drugs and procedures in the NHS remains painfully slow.
"The processes have been put in place, the public funding of biomedical research is improved, but the translation of these improvements into patient benefit has not yet materialized," the report concluded.
Published January 28, 2009 [标签:content1][标签:content2]
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-03-12 23:47
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