Keeping you Informed: Summary of the LSS Collaborations Workstream Meeting May 2010

This is a brief review of the LSS collaborations workstream meeting that took place in Dundee, 10th May 2010.

The purpose of this workstream group, composed of all the Scottish Life Sciences networking organisations (ABPI, BIA (S), BioDundee, Life Sciences Scotland Aberdeen, Nexxus, Scottish Academic Health Sciences
Collaboration (SAHSC), Scottish Bioinformatics Forum, Scottish Stem Cell Network, SINAPSE, SULSA ), together with key representatives from the NHS and public sector (Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Development International (SDI) and Scottish Enterprise), is to share information and to encourage knowledge exchange across the sector.

As always with this group, the agenda items provoked wide discussion, as people shared their knowledge, experience and viewpoints. The function of this blog is to bring the discussion to a wider audience and to encourage further comment and sharing of information.

Focus on Dundee

First up was our host, BioDundee, to give us an update on their latest life sciences happenings. Their flagship event, the BioDundee conference, takes place on 17th June. http://www.biodundee.co.uk/index.asp?lm=10&nid=550 This event, now in its 10th year, is entitled "Building Alliances" and will focus on partnerships and collaborations. The conference is preceded by the annual BioDundee golf competition on 16th June, which always proves to be a very popular networking event.

The printed BioDundee Update has been revived, and the new edition will have a circulation 14,000 globally.


BioPortal is a new initiative which sees Biodundee and the University of Dundee working to promote latent IP
to Dundee companies.

Generic skills Dundee http://www.dundee.ac.uk/genericskills is a research council funded resource for transferable skills training to enhance careers. This is open to any post-graduate research student or member of early career/post-doctoral research staff at Dundee.

Discussion on ‘skills training‘

The mention of Dundee’s Generic Skills resource stimulated general discussion amongst the group. Members of the LSS Connections group are aware of a number of similar initiatives across Scotland, but not much was known about them, or what the rate of uptake is across the life sciences sector.

The group is aware that the LSS People workstream is looking at transferable skills, etc. A draft map of training initiatives, from primary education level onwards, is currently being conducted, and this mapping will go onto the LSS web site. The LSS company skills survey is also now underway.

The LSS Connections group suggested that it would be a good idea to get someone who is going through one of these training schemes to keep a blog for a year or so, to share their experience with the wider life sciences community. This sparked discussion on who should be selected for the blog, and what the incentive might
be. Ideas included:

- having a range of blogs, from representatives of the various pooling initiatives such as SINAPSE, SULSA and from each university.

- Making it competitive, so it becomes a 'student of the year' blog, or reward for best students. Some type of incentive such as an ipad could be offered to bloggers. There would be a need to develop criteria to judge entries.

- It would be open to anyone doing a post grad in life sciences, and who is also doing transferable skills training.

BIO 2010, Chicago

Graeme Boyle of Nexxus attended this event, and reported back to the group. It was thought to be a very positive meeting for Scottish companies, and lots of useful contacts were made. Good feeling of optimism, compared to BIO 2009, which coincided with the start of recession. Unlike earlier BIOs, the exhibition
was not that well attended, as everyone was at partnership meetings. 17,000 meetings took place over the duration of the conference! Participants generally had their meeting schedule sorted before getting to BIO, and the 1-1 meetings lasted for 30 mins. The management consultants, Campbell Alliance, in conjunction with BIO presented a study of the intentions of VC dealmakers. The study revealed that showed “45% of new opportunities are being identified through partnering meetings, rather than traditional sources such as literature search and scientific meetings".

A major theme of the conference was that of partnerships, and there was seen to be strong Chinese participation, especially regarding CROs.

Technology growth areas reflected at BIO were in CNS, Pain, Oncology. There appears to be an active VC investment market, for well matched technologies. Personalised medicine seen to be gaining traction and there was a lot of focus on the patient. Also a lot of activity in US on biofuels, green biotech in ascendancy.

Visit the Nexxus blog for more details on BIO 2010 http://nexxusscotland.wordpress.com/

A discussion followed on Scotland’s strengths in these technology growth areas, especially in personalised medicine, where the access to national tissue banks, family linked samples (e.g. Generation Scotland), electronic patient records etc, ought to give us a strong advantage. What more needs to be done? It was thought that we need enabling legislation to allow a 'safe haven' set up for feasibility studies using tissue banks. We have done the thinking, but need implementation before we can do it. We are about a year from having it working, though have been talking for much longer.

Collaboration – industry perspective.

Diane Thompson (ABPI) reported on a recent ABPI conference in London, involving senior pharmaceutical industry representatives together with NHS and OLS (Office for Life Sciences). A major focus of the OLS is very much on promoting industry collaboration with NHS and Academia across the UK. At the conference there was a report of what the NIHR was offering to increase the attraction of England as a location to conduct clinical research. For example, a major pharma company gave an update on a strategic collaboration they had in Manchester and how effective it had been. There is a huge opportunity to further promote Scotland as a leading location for both commercial and non-commercial clinical studies.

The workstream discussed the benefits of benchmarking the number of industry/academic/NHS collaborations that we have in Scotland,and using this information to showcase success and to help drive future investment. This is a major theme for LiSAB and there are significant efforts underway via SAHSC, NRS-CC, CSO and SDI to encourage more commercially-sponsored clinical research in Scotland. The collaborations workstream is very willing to provide additional help if required in this task.

Relevant point: The group also discussed the recent merger of ERBI with LBN. The UK is not competing with the USA, but merely with US states. There is a need for everyone to come together to survive.

AOB

SINAPSE Spirit award. SINAPSE is receiving an award of £1.2M from the SFC to link academics and companies. All with translational imaging focus. There is funding for 12 students but 15 projects have been identified. How can they get more funding for the extra 3 places? Very high demand for these positions, very good to attract high quality students to industry supported projects.

Spirit award – SULSA very good response for their programmes, lot of interest from Scottish SMEs and other industry, with good offers of match funding. Also good response for student placements, 50% funded by companies.

ShareBiotech: This is a European programme sharing life sciences infrastructure and skills across the Atlantic area. Purpose is to promote transnational collaboration and maximisation of life sciences infrastructure. SBF and Nexxus have invitations to be engaged in this programme, and plan to see what can be extended to the wider Scottish network.

ACTION FOR ALL MEMBERS OF THE LSS COMMUNITY: If you have opinions on, or information to add, on any of the topics covered here, please do share them using the comments box below.