Bio19 World Insight June 2019

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4 | <strong>Insight</strong> | worldinsight.co.uk An independent supplement by world insight Longevity economy in the UK being pioneered in Newcastle A city region that invented the light bulb has continued to innovate to this day and now finds itself a test bed for research into healthy ageing By Mike Cowley Newcastle in the North East of England may not be particularly well known to the US public at large, but it is punching way above its weight in terms of investment interest from the States. This is because the city is now seen by the global life science community as the regional center of a cluster of growing importance combined with its position as a unique test bed for research into healthy ageing. In terms of ageing, it is now recognized as a world leader in the sector which is increasingly causing global concern, and this has seen it develop close working relationships with counterparts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AgeLab. Last year, Newcastle led a delegation to Boston, built around the North East’s expertise in ageing, nutrition, digital, science and tech with the aim of building strategic partnerships and sharing strengths. This led to the founder of the MIT AgeLab, Professor Joseph F Coughlin returning to Newcastle for five days to meet the region’s innovators. During his stay, he discussed the region’s knowledge and expertise in ageing, data science and urban partnerships. Both visits explored academic, civic, and business opportunities for growth and collaboration. With ageing now very much at the top of the global health agenda, Newcastle has taken the lead in considering economic opportunities and the challenges of supporting an ageing population, to help transform the quality of life for families, communities and the city. Newcastle University, one of the leading research-intensive Russell Group Universities in the United Kingdom, is at the forefront of the fight back against the issues presented by an increasingly elderly population with its Campus for Ageing and Newcastle is a world leader for research into healthy ageing. Inward Investment Director Jen Hartley (below) says the city is one of the UK’s most competitive business locations Vitality, widely recognised as one of the strongest assets in Europe for expertise in the field. The university’s reputation in the field has been enhanced in that it has devised a new model for developing, testing and bringing to market products and services that will improve quality of life. With co-investment from the UK Government, it launched the National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) alongside the National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD). Whereas research into ageing is seen as a key strength for Newcastle, there is little doubt that this is in part, due to it being the capital of the North East and the region’s $1.4 billion life science ecosystem. The North East is home to one of the UK’s largest NHS trusts, with more specialist services than any other group of hospitals outside London. Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust has also been recently rated “outstanding” for a second time, being just one of five in the country to get this rating twice. As such, it has developed a global reputation as a hot spot for clinical trials supported by pioneers at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities. The city is also home to the International Centre for Life established in 2000, where clinicians are pioneering science, particularly in the fields of genetics and fertility treatment, leading with the first threeparent IVF treatment. The city’s Freeman Hospital is also renowned for performing the first successful UK infant heart transplant in 1987. “We are one of the UK’s most competitive places to do business” More than 200 life science and healthcare companies base themselves in the region, including Newcastleheadquartered QuantuMDx, who are providing transformative diagnostics and benefited from collaborating with Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, both world-leading in their fields. “Locating our HQ in the innovative North East – in preference to the ‘biotech golden triangle” of Oxford/ Cambridge/London – was a conscious decision,” says Elaine Warburton, QuantuMDx’s chief executive. “When we arrived in Newcastle in 2012, we found a city with an incredible genetics network alongside an excellent network of academic, industrial and key opinion leaders, all seeking to support a forward-looking young biotech company, with a global vision, that wanted to change the world. Newcastle and Northumbria Universities focus on this skill set offering numerous high-calibre graduates and postgraduates from all scientific disciplines including engineering, biology, chemistry and software development.” Such is the potential for this company that they’ve collaborated with key US partners including Intellectual Venture’s Global Good and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And QuantuMDx finds itself in good company in the area, with global companies such as P&G, Accord Healthcare, Nonlinear Dynamics (A Waters Company), MSD, Leica and Piramal located there. Jen Hartley, Inward Investment Director, Invest Newcastle, sums it up by saying: “The city has a vision to help people live well and independently for longer, adapting and creating new products and services to meet the needs of an ageing population. “With strengths in life science, we are seeing so many innovations and ideas that can improve health and the quality of life as we age. “We are one of the UK’s most competitive places to do business, but that isn’t just what is attracting businesses to our region, it’s our unique ecosystem, the talent and world-class research that is unpinned by an experienced and supportive business community. “Our city is fast becoming a test bed for innovation, and more and more businesses want to be part of that.” Newcastle is a city that thrives on fresh ideas. It is the city that really did invent the light bulb – and now it is ready to invent the future. To find out more about this UK city, contact Invest Newcastle on +44 (0)191 440 5761, email invest@ngi.org.uk or visit www.investnewcastle.com Newcastle Helix fast becoming a hotspot for global innovation The $65m building Newcastle Helix is a $456 million flagship development site that brings together a community of academics, industry leaders, businesses, top researchers and citizens. The site of a former brewery – home of the famed Newcastle Brown Ale – the 24-acre site is the UK’s biggest urban development of its kind outside of London, combining prestigious commercial and residential space with first-class research and education facilities. It is being delivered through unique public and private sector partnership between Newcastle City Council, Newcastle University and Legal & General. Fast becoming a landmark location for science, technology, business, living and leisure, Newcastle Helix is already home to The Core, a sevenfloor building where digital and innovation-led SMEs are based and the Urban Sciences Building, designed for teaching, laboratory research, events and testing real-time smart technologies for urban sustainability. A brand new lab facility “The Biosphere” has also just opened its doors to ambitious companies within life science and innovation, research and development. A welcome addition to the Newcastle Helix property portfolio, further enhancing its profile as a hotspot for life science and global innovation. For the life science sector, the site’s proximity to Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and within an hour’s drive, life science businesses have access to assets that support the entire bench to bedside pathway. Construction is also well under way for a new $38m teaching and learning hub “The Frederick Douglass Centre” and a $65m building “The Catalyst” that will house three national facilities – the National Innovation Centre for Ageing, National Innovation Centre for Data, and the National Institute for Health Research Innovation Observatory, a world-first in using big data analytics and machine learning to study global health innovation. This development is fast becoming a test bed for new ideas, innovative technologies and solutions that will addresses some ‘The Catalyst’ of the most pressing challenges facing cities around the world. All 24-acres is dedicated to helping everyone live better lives, now and in the future. To find out more, visit www. newcastlehelix.com
An independent supplement by world insight worldinsight.co.uk | <strong>Insight</strong> | 5 Glasgow City Region, the second-largest life science cluster in the United Kingdom with more than 230 companies, is among those which has seen the future in precision medicine Glasgow nucleus of unique ‘triple helix’ precision medicine project Scotland is positioning itself at the forefront of precision medicine, the implementation of which could generate estimated health savings of £70bn The global IMPORTANCE of precision medicine (PM) cannot be downplayed in terms of its potential impact, not only on health, but in terms of the economic prosperity it can offer both the companies and regions who will be at the forefront of the technologies that will underpin it. It was estimated the global PM market value in 2016 was $43 billion and this figure is projected to rise to around $134bn by 2025. Driven by demand for cost savings on drugs that are currently being wasted by the fact that they don’t work in mass dispensation, here then is the life science market that offers the top prize. In Scotland alone, analysis by the University of Glasgow Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment team suggests that over a 50-year period, a 10% reduction in the burden of five key disease types, including age-related ills and cancer, through the implementation of PM, would generate cumulative health savings in Scotland of around £70bn. That’s one reason why Glasgow Dr Carol Clugston of Glasgow University City Region, the second-largest life science cluster in the UK with more than 230 companies, is among those which has clearly seen the future in PM – sometimes known as stratified or personalized medicine – and is now seeking to lead the field by making a unique contribution in drawing complementary strengths together in a way that is not happening in the rest of the world. It is an ethos known as the “triple helix”, bringing together the NHS, university academics and companies working in PM seamlessly as bedfellows for the first time. Spearheaded by Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak and Dr Carol Clugston of the University of Glasgow, the project seeks to ensure the city region – and Scotland as a whole – is the go-to place for international companies who can contribute to the ongoing research into PM in this highly competitive global sector. “In the future, precision medicine will simply become medicine – and A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is one of the most devastating anyone can receive. Survival rates are bleak and showing few signs of improvement – fewer than three in every 100 people diagnosed with the disease can expect to be alive after five years. The scale of the challenge facing cancer scientists may seem almost insurmountable, but the team at Glasgow is meeting it head on. Led by Andrew Biankin, Regius Professor of Surgery and Director of the Wolfson Wohl Cancer Research Centre (who hails from Australia but brought his whole team to Glasgow because he we intend to make sure that happens,” insists Dr Clugston. And the Glasgow City Region message is resonating around the global life science community, particularly in the United States. That’s why BioSpyder Technologies, the Californian molecular profiling company, invested more than $12.5m to create a new subsidiary, BioClavis, in Glasgow. The personalized diagnostics spin-out was supported with a $5.7m grant from Scottish Enterprise, creating 43 jobs initially. BioSpyder considered a range of locations around Europe (in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands), but soon realized the $1bn QEUH campus in Glasgow’s Govan area was the best location for setting up BioClavis. Naturally, the US company looked at the Golden Triangle of life sciences in the UK – Cambridge, Oxford and London – but like many other investors ruled it out not because of lower office cost, but because of recruiting technicians who could thought it offered more scope), it is making significant advances. Professor Biankin’s flagship initiative Precision-Panc uses a precision medicine approach to find and understand molecular differences between each patient’s specific form of pancreatic cancer in order to target them with all and only the right treatments for their individual tumor. And with more than $12.5 million of NHS funding, in excess of $10m of which was allocated to Glasgow, groundbreaking new trials have now begun. These are recruiting pancreatic cancer patients as soon after their diagnosis as not afford to live there. The first key attractor in Glasgow was the scale and quality of clinical data and samples they would be able to access. QEUH has one of the largest pathology laboratories in the UK and Europe, and a large biorepository, which is networked to others across Scotland. The company also saw the networking infrastructure as a real asset of Glasgow, specifically the integration of industry, academics and clinicians at the Clinical Innovation Zone (CIZ). And home in the CIZ means BioClavis and other PM companies find themselves at the heart of the hospital. Here everyone literally comes together with PM researchers and developers rubbing shoulders with clinicians, so offering contacts for a unique entry into the NHS market that has proved difficult, if not impossible, to access in the past. Nor did BioSpyder overlook that the university hospital campus is also home to the University of Glasgow’s dedicated centre for PM and imaging Precision-Panc shining new light on pancreatic cancer possible in order to undergo tumor biopsies and apply the targeted treatment most likely to be able to help their condition, whether that is innovative new drugs, surgery, or both. There are several important flagship research projects and initiatives that illustrate the breadth and depth of Scotland’s PM capabilities including the SMS-IC’s multiple exemplar projects, IMIDBio-UK project (Rheumatoid Arthritis), Scottish Genomes Partnership (genome sequencing), SMS-IC participation in AstraZeneca’s Global Genomics Initiative and the Innovate UK NASH Data Commons project. and so offers access to a goldmine of “cradle to the grave” electronic patient records, clinical trial infrastructure, partner identification, and logistical and financial support. Or that the Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre is located in the Clinical Innovation Zone. A pan-Scottish collaboration, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and industry, its role is to support industry to work with the NHS and academics to drive PM. Each of the companies in the CIZ have also been handpicked for their interest in collaboration, not just with the NHS and their neighbors, but further afield, as the university hospital is the heart of a burgeoning Scotland bioscience corridor. BioClavis for one has taken full advantage of the NHS links offered by the CIZ and has used this as a springboard for collaboration, not only in the region, but also throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK. Such has been the success of the Clinical Innovation Zone that it won a UK Science Park Association award this year in the “location setting the pace” category The plan now is to develop a new linked campus adjacent to the hospital – the Clyde Waterfront Innovation Campus – which, along with other innovation facilities such as a nanofabrication centre for quantum technology, will provide a “Living Lab” for PM. The Living Lab project will strengthen Glasgow’s ecosystem by establishing new innovation pathways in a real-world clinical setting and a dedicated Health Innovation Hub that offers grow-on space and enabling “soft” infrastructures. “We have a choice in Scotland. Are we going to be at the forefront of precision medicine, or are we going to be buying these technologies from other countries?” asks Dr Clugston. “Quite honestly, we want to be the former.”
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Bio19 World Insight June 2019

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