CEO Update - 27 May 2025
Vaccine pioneers BioNTech to invest £1 billion over 10 years in UK
Great news for our ecosystem as BioNTech announced last week that they plan to significantly expand their presence in the UK over the next 10 years. They plan to create two new R&D hubs, the first to be based in Cambridge, as well as an AI hub to be based at BioNTech’s planned UK headquarters in London. More than 400 new highly skilled jobs will be created for researchers in clinical and scientific drug development, bioinformatics, and a range of supporting functions.
Steve Bates OBE
CEO, BIA
CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin, said:
This agreement marks the next chapter of our successful strategic partnership with the UK government. Together, we have already made a meaningful difference in expanding access to investigational personalized cancer therapies for patients. Now, we are taking the next step to accelerate and broaden our research and development efforts advancing towards our vision to translate science into survival for patients.
This development is a great boost for our sector and a testament to the hard work done by the Office of Life Sciences team across many, many months.
Forbion joins CellCentric’s $120 million Series C raise
Congratulations are also rightly due to Will West and the CellCentric team for their Series C raise announced last week. The financing was co-led by RA Capital Management in Boston, US, and a new investor, Forbion in the Netherlands.
It was great to be able to celebrate the news with our charity partner Blood Cancer UK at their royal reception in London last week, specifically because the proceeds of this raise will be used to support the initiation of a Phase II/III study in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma patients, with the potential to support an accelerated approval. Inobrodib’s truly novel mechanism of action, oral delivery, and favourable safety profile make it an attractive additional option.
Will West, CEO of CellCentric, said:
âWe are delighted to secure the investment required to continue to advance inobrodib fully and as effectively as possible. This is a significant raise in a challenging market.
“The MHRA is once again taking a global lead”, says Lord O’Shaughnessy
Global Clinical Trials Day was the obvious day for new MHRA CEO Lawrence Tallon's recent article and the MHRA's associated press release confidently now asserting the UK as "one of the best places in the world to conduct trials."
The new framework for trials regulation is the most significant update of its kind in twenty years. It's designed to be faster, more proportionate, and more patient-focused, cutting approval times, enhancing transparency, and reinforcing the UK’s appeal as a global destination for research. And it’s a process that BIA member experts have been consulted on along the way. It’s great to see the agency with its mojo back, excited to be at the cutting edge of science, when that’s not the regulatory experience biotechs are reporting in other parts of the world.
New BIA report examines benefits of accelerator support for life science companies as new CEOs gather at fifth annual BIA Start-up Festival
Our fifth annual Start-up Festival last week brought together the best of rising talent in the sector for a day of informative sessions, learning from peers and established industry experts alike. We used the day to launch our new BIA report, The UK life science accelerator landscape: Fuelling early growth, addressing the scaling challenge.
This report analyses the schemes available to early-stage life science entrepreneurs in the UK. It shows there is a vibrant community of accelerators, incubators and other initiatives to support early-stage life science companies. Companies that take part in an accelerator raise significantly larger seed rounds than their peers who do not. Accelerated companies are no more likely to fail than their peers, but do fail faster, increasing sector efficiency. Accelerated companies may be more likely to exit than their peers.
This work is intrinsically linked to the BIA Innovation Map, our dynamic resource designed to help innovators navigate the landscape of available support. The BIA is proud to run the PULSE accelerator programme in partnership with the Francis Crick Institute, which exemplifies the power of collaboration in nurturing early-stage innovation, but there exists a wide variety of other programmes meeting a breadth of needs across the sector.
TechBio Boost, delivered with KQ Labs and supported by the UK Government, is directly helping a cohort of data-driven life science companies scale up further. More broadly, we connect start-ups with the wider community through initiatives such as the Women in Biotech mentoring programme and the Life Science Leadership Summit.
WHO signed the Pandemic Agreement
The UK joined nations from across the globe as a signatory to the WHO's new Treaty on Pandemic Preparedness. We’ve worked hard over the years to ensure policymakers have a real understanding of how our innovative industry works, the vital role of IP and why voluntary approaches between companies are the quickest and most practicable way of ensuring global supply chains function efficiently at pace in moments of highest stress. Read our blog for more details.