Together we aim to cure cancer: Boris Johnson believes MedCity ‘golden triangle’ will help conquer diseases

 
Joining the dots: Boris Johnson and Laura Flynn, right, said the formation of a life sciences will lead to world-class results
Pippa Crerar9 April 2014

A new collective of Britain’s top scientists, life science companies and investors was launched today with the aim of making major breakthroughs in the fight against diseases such as cancer and dementia.

MedCity will bring together the “golden triangle” of London, Cambridge and Oxford universities as well as hospitals, scientific institutions and businesses.

Mayor Boris Johnson said he believed that pharmaceutical, bio-tech and med-tech industries would eventually rival the financial services sector in their role in the economy.

More than 700,000 people are employed in the life sciences field in the South-East and Mr Johnson said he hoped that number would double over the next two decades.

MedCity, based on the successful TechCity initiative, will promote the sector internationally in a bid to rival Boston in the US, and the burgeoning hubs of Singapore and Shanghai.

It will receive more than £4 million in funding — £2.9 million from the Higher Education Funding Council and £1.2 million from City Hall — to help promote it across the globe.

As well as creating jobs and attracting billions of pounds of investment, it will help to spur the discovery of treatments to tackle diseases.

The South-East — home to six of the world’s best universities — has long been at the forefront of groundbreaking research, from the discovery of penicillin and DNA to the links between lung cancer and smoking.

Kit Malthouse, deputy mayor for business, said: “We have created this incredibly powerful discovery engine. How do we turn that into cures? These things have to come out of academia and be turned into therapies and drugs.

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“We have to find a solution to dementia. If we don’t find one in the next 30 years, it’s going to bankrupt the country. We have incredibly ambitious research being spun out in a patchy way. We don’t have the same culture as the US to turn our discoveries into business.

“Having a strong, vibrant cluster of life sciences is good for London and the South-East.”

The body was set up by the Mayor and King’s Health Partners, Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre and UCL partners, with Oxford and Cambridge universities.

It will be supported by a panel of experts, including Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society and chief of the new Francis Crick Institute, Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, and entrepreneurs including Dr Hermann Hauser and Dr Simon Kerry.

Over the last 10 years, employment in life sciences has risen by 21 per cent — compared with 12 per cent for all employment. In the last five years, the South-East, including London, attracted 76 foreign investment projects in the field, worth £660 million and creating 3,300 jobs.

Mr Johnson said: “Together with Oxford and Cambridge, we form a ‘golden triangle’ of scientific innovation and we need to channel that intellectual pre-eminence into a positive impact on our economy.

“I am in no doubt that having the whole chain doing their research, clinical development and manufacturing in London and the South-East can be as important to our economy as the financial services sector.”

Lara Flynn, vice-president of bio-tech firm Circassia, said: “It’s exactly the sort of initiative we need to join the dots of everything we’ve already got. We’ve got tons of amazing stuff going on here, so I hope that it will draw people’s attention to the high-calibre science that we produce.”

Eliot Forster, chairman of MedCity, said: “This is a singular opportunity for this sector to find its rightful place in the world market; to create new companies, new therapies, new investments and to deliver economic and patient benefits.”

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