NEWS OF THE WEEK
U.K. RESEARCH GETS A SHOT IN THE ARM Prime Minister Cameron outlined the U.K.’s life sciences strategy last week.
ficials acknowledge that rapid changes occurring in the industry need to be addressed. “We need to create the right environment for scientists and business to work together and translate research into new, cutting-edge technologies and medicines,” Minister of State for Universities & Science David Willetts said. “This will boost our economy, create new jobs, and lead to better treatments for patients.” Through its Medical Research Council, the U.K. government is also investing close to $16 million in a collaboration with AstraZeneca. Under the agreement, the U.K. drug firm will make 22 compounds available free of charge to academic researchers, who will study the compounds’ efficacy against various diseases. Separately, AstraZeneca has added $100 million to its venture capital arm, MedImmune Ventures, to invest in biopharmaceutical companies. Leaders of U.K.-based health care, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industry associations welcomed the strategy and initiatives. GlaxoSmithKline called the plan “a very important next step on the journey to make the U.K. the best place in the world to locate pharmaceutical investment.” Stating its commitment to work with the government to deliver on the promises, GSK said it is “positive about Britain’s future prospects as a place to research, develop, manufacture, and commercialize our medicines.”—ANN THAYER
NEWSCOM
FUNDING: British government looks to support the life sciences industry
RITISH PRIME MINISTER David Cameron outlined his government’s strategy for the U.K.’s life sciences industry at a conference in London last week. The plan, spelled out in two reports, includes a $282 million fund to support medical research as well as changes to the delivery of new therapies through the National Health Service. Britain’s ambition is not just to retain a foothold but to take a bigger share of the global life sciences market, Cameron said. “I want the great discoveries of the next decade happening in British labs, the new technologies born in British start-ups,” he said. New funding will target the gap between idea generation in the lab and market investment in a new drug or technology. With more than 4,500 companies, 165,000 employees, and $78 billion in annual revenues, the life sciences sector has been growing faster than the U.K. economy as a whole, according to the U.K. government. Still, of-
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NIH EXPANDS GENOME PROGRAM RESEARCH: Federal sequencing effort
shifts funds to clinical applications
HE NATIONAL Institutes of Health is broaden-
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ing its genome-sequencing program to focus more on medical applications. Although most of the program’s budget will fund basic research at three large-scale sequencing centers, nearly one-quarter of the money will be redirected to help push genomics into clinical care. “There have been some remarkable medical successes for genomics, but genome sequencing has yet to find its way into standard medical practice,” Eric D. Green, director of NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, said at a Dec. 6 briefing. NHGRI, which runs the federal sequencing program, hopes its future investments in the program will accelerate the realization of genomic medicine, Green noted. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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Large-scale sequencing centers face less NIH funding for basic research.
NHGRI plans to maintain its current level of funding for the program and invest $416 million over the next four years, Green said. The bulk of the funding, some 77%, will continue to support basic research at three sequencing centers: the Broad Institute of Harvard University and MIT, the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine. The remaining 23%, or about $100 million, will be redirected to support three new priority areas aimed at bringing genome sequencing into routine medical practice. These areas are finding causes of rare, inherited disorders; evaluating the medical, ethical, and societal impacts of using genome sequencing in clinical care; and addressing the bioinformatics bottleneck created by the deluge of sequencing data. The shift in funds will cut the budgets of the three sequencing centers, but the reductions won’t hit all at once. NHGRI plans to reduce the base funding of each center by about 5% each year over the next four years, NHGRI Deputy Director Mark S. Guyer noted at the briefing. That reduction in funding is expected to coincide with a drop in cost of DNA sequencing. “We believe the cost of sequencing will continue to decline,” Guyer said. As a result, NHGRI’s sequencing program can maintain its high level of productivity at even lower costs, he noted. As costs drop, money will be redirected to other priorities, he said.—BRITT ERICKSON
DECEMBER 12, 2011
