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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Shortly after this year’s 70th anniversary of British researchers’ discovery of the double helix, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared, as he unveiled a plan to turn the UK into a scientific “superpower”, that science and innovation “have been in our DNA for decades”. Yet for life sciences, a vaunted UK strength, the future is cloudy. Even as Merck of the US prepares to break ground on a £1bn London research centre, its research chief warned this week that Britain needs to become more welcoming to drugs companies. Warm words and historical credentials can only go so far: the government has to deliver a holistic remedy to the UK’s waning pharma competitiveness.
Companies cite UK drug pricing as a disincentive to invest. A voluntary scheme agreed in 2019 caps growth in the NHS bill for branded medicines at 2 per cent a year; drugmakers have to pay back any excess. Blockbuster spending in recent years, due to the pandemic, means drugs companies will this year have to return £3.3bn, or 26.5 per cent of sales — double a similar clawback in Germany and triple that in France.
The voluntary scheme is due to expire at the year-end and be renegotiated, or companies will revert to a similar statutory system. This offers an opportunity to revise the arrangement — which a report for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry estimated will otherwise cost the UK £5.7bn in lost investment in research and development between 2024 and 2028 — to bring the UK more into line with EU counterparts. But a balance must be struck to ensure this does not push up NHS costs.
Britain is also falling down global rankings in running clinical trials; Novartis recently scrapped a major trial of a cholesterol drug. The NHS can potentially offer access to a large population for testing treatments, but these are carried out at the level of regional NHS trusts, adding complexity and cost. A centralised approach would be possible, as the pandemic showed. The Recovery trial, a large-scale study into Covid treatments, suspended the usual practice and included more than 170 hospitals.
The coming award of a £480mn contract to build a “federated data platform” for NHS England, with Palantir of the US reportedly the frontrunner, is a potential game-changer here. Provided privacy concerns are addressed, the possibility to put together millions of health records with genetic data in which Britain is a world leader could help to run large-scale clinical trials and develop innovative treatments. The 100,000 Genomes Project, launched in 2012 to sequence NHS patients’ genomes and study links to health and disease, has already been a draw for international groups.
Brexit has also proved a lingering malaise. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the medicines watchdog, has lost millions of pounds in funding and access to a larger regulatory market. Resulting delays have since diminished, but more efforts are needed to regain the MHRA’s previous standing, including through planned alliances with regulators in countries such as Australia.
There are bright spots. The UK’s agreement to rejoin the EU’s €95.5bn Horizon Europe science initiative in September was a welcome return to collaboration. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a £650mn “war chest” for life sciences in May to help improve clinical trials and incentivise investments by pension funds.
The government’s latest “Life Sciences Vision” in 2021 promised to build on lessons from the pandemic, harness UK genomic data and create a supportive business environment. The government will need to show it cannot just set lofty targets but do the detailed work to achieve them, if the UK is to be a future life sciences leader — rather than trading on its past scientific glories.
