England's Northwest, one of the top three biomedical clusters in the UK embracing biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device & healthcare technology industries, is offering a slew of incentives to Indian pharma companies interested in investing in the region, according to Sarah Kemp, director of Business Relations, North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA).
NWDA offers a highly-developed regional industry support programme with a supportive environment to support company growth plus 'soft finance' products relevant to this field.
The soft finance products include capital investment grants, grants for research and development, equity finance, investments by Business Angels, small business - loans, BBSRC products including Industry Interchange Programme, Industry Fellowships Scheme, Industrial CASE awards and TSB Products including Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and Collaborative Research and Development.
There is also a particular current focus upon the Technology Strategy Board with the recently announced £18m technology platform in regenerative medicine and the European Innovative Medicines Initiative with a total budget of 2 billion euros. The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a unique pan-European public and private sector collaboration between large and small biopharmaceutical and healthcare companies, regulators, academia and patients. The aim of IMI is to support the faster discovery and development of better medicines for patients and enhance Europe's competitiveness by ensuring that its biopharmaceutical sector remains a dynamic high-technology sector. The Innovative Medicines Initiative will ensure that Europe's biomedical sciences receive targeted strategic support for the benefit of patients, as well as the scientists and citizens of Europe.
Some skills support include: Biomanufacturing - largest in-market biomanufacturing community in Europe based at Speke and skilled workforce that goes with this; PfL - training in good-laboratory training, aseptic techniques and other specialist pharmaceutical training; and Centre for Integrative Mammalian Biology (IMB) - (The Northwest academic consortium of the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool are working closely and collaboratively to achieve the common goal of delivering education, training and alliances in in vivo research to the highest scientific and ethical standards) with a dedicated resource funded by NWDA to promote in vivo skills provision to industry.
A further part of the value proposition is the support structure for clinical research in the region. The Northwest has a highly developed and supportive infrastructure to support clinical trials. Added to this is the Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre. The region has recently been designated the UK's only "exemplar" site for clinical trials.
England's Northwest is home to more than 160 biomedical companies and 120 medical device and healthcare technology companies. The cluster is built upon the presence of multiple multinational pharmaceutical companies, an expanding biotechnology community, major healthcare technology companies and extensive specialist supply chain. The investment climate in Northwest region is also outstanding.
As India has a strong pharma-manufacturing industry particularly known for its generics manufacturing Sarah hopes to see more R&D collaborations between Indian companies and NW-based academic and clinical expertise. As Indian companies move towards extending their abilities to develop new products NWDA can assist Indian companies to easily access regional networks to connect with institutions and companies with whom they can collaborate for shared benefits. "We hope that these collaborations will lead to even more Indian companies setting up in the region and continuing the trend of companies benefiting from investing in the Northwest," she said.
The Northwest sees India as a key source of inward investment and is proactively engaging with Indian companies to enable companies in both India and the UK to benefit from working together.
"With a dedicated resource based in India, NWDA hopes to reinforce strong historical links between our countries in order to promote the Research and Development opportunities that our pharmaceutical cluster can bring to Indian businesses," she concluded.