Resources

The political party conference season is in full swing, and the BIA is out in force in Liverpool for the Labour Party conference this week. I'm heartened to see the focus in ministerial speeches and the fringe on topics close to our hearts. Read on for updates on the Lib Dem conference, West Streeting speech and Invest in Women Taskforce.

In this blog, PIR International presents an interview with Anja Harmeier, CEO of Rewind Therapeutics, as part of their BioLeader interview series.

DLRC Ltd has been honoured with the King’s Award for Enterprise, recognising its outstanding performance in international trade. This places DLRC among a select group of only 252 organisations in the UK to receive this prestigious award.

In the final piece of the 'AI in life sciences' series, Jenny Yu, Marsh’s Life Sciences industry practice leader and experts from law firm Kennedys emphasize essential steps for life sciences companies to develop and implement a successful AI business strategy. They delve into effective management of outcomes from AI technologies and strategies to mitigate potential risks.

Importers of laboratory reagents and materials used in the manufacture of medicines in the UK’s life sciences sector have been given a six-month extension to make the necessary changes to their supply chains for new post-Brexit border paperwork and border inspections.

BIA Future of UK Regulation Conference 2023: Novel technologies

The document helps sponsors understand the transparency obligations in the Clinical Trials Regulation in relation to information submitted to the Clinical Trials Information System (CTIS) in support of a clinical trial application. It also offers guidance regarding deferral of publication of clinical trial information and redaction of documents that include commercially confidential information (CCI) and personal data.

New draft legislation was published last week on the UK’s R&D tax regime, which will continue to support innovative life sciences and biotech companies to conduct essential clinical trials and some pre-clinical work overseas. The campaign has been covered in Research Professional. The legislation, yet to be approved by Parliament, follows the announcement by the former Chancellor, Rishi Sunak MP, that the regime would be amended to end payments for R&D conducted overseas to “refocus” it on innovation in the UK.

Rare Disease Day 2022, taking place 28 February, is devoted to raising awareness and generating change for the 300 million people worldwide living with a rare disease. Joe Smale, Policy and Public Affairs Executive at the BIA, reflects on the current rare disease landscape and the opportunity for improving patient access to specialist care, treatment and drugs.

Jabbed! a TV documentary telling the inside story of the UK Vaccines Taskforce is on Channel 4 this evening at 10pm. Tune in to see interviews with familiar faces including Kate Bingham and Ian McCubbin. I hope the documentary puts front and centre the early work done by the BIA COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Taskforce as part of the UK’s great vaccine story.

It’s our Annual General Meeting this week which you can join on Zoom and I’m expecting a big week for Brexit. Thank you to members who stood for and voted in our Board election in recent weeks. The results will be announced at our first virtual AGM this Wednesday and I invite all members to join. For the full meeting details and password, please email Nick Gardiner [email protected] He will also be circulating these details to all main members shortly.

As the New Year and new decade dawn, geo-politics has the capacity to fundamentally affect the fortunes of life sciences businesses. In my view, the five key areas of impact on our sector will be trade, competition, regulation, funding and access. It is vital that we retain a strong voice in policy debates about these key areas over the coming year to sustain an industry which has never had greater global visibility than it now does.