The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has welcomed the two recent major investments in UK life sciences in April - £300 million by AstraZeneca and £150 million by Boehringer Ingelheim, and termed it as "the real progress unlocked by the landmark UK-US pharmaceutical arrangement."
ABPI chief executive Richard Torbett said, "This has been a remarkable month for UK life sciences, and for the patients who ultimately benefit when the world's leading pharmaceutical companies choose to invest here.
"AstraZeneca's decision to resume and even boost the £300 million expansion of its Macclesfield and Cambridge research campus, and Boehringer Ingelheim's launch of a new £150 million artificial intelligence accelerator in King's Cross, are both powerful signals that the UK's position as a global destination for life sciences investment is being restored.
"Together, they represent nearly half a billion pounds of commitment to research that will help find new medicines for patients."
He pointed out that barely six months ago, the picture looked very different. "Several major companies had paused or withdrawn significant investments, citing a UK environment that was not internationally competitive.
"The UK-US pharmaceutical arrangement reached in December, and particularly the increase to the NICE baseline cost-effectiveness threshold, has begun to shift how industry sees the UK.
“When companies believe that the medicines they develop will be properly valued and made available to NHS patients, they invest. While there is more to do, we are starting to see that positive feedback loop that we’ve all been trying to achieve.”
Since the UK-US deal was announced in December, there have been 13 pharmaceutical investment commitments across the UK, totalling £1.4 billion in inward investment.
Some of the major investments include Bristol Myers Squibb (£380m), UCB (£500m), GSK (£11m), and Norgine (£23m).
Boehringer Ingelheim's office in London will focus on developing foundational AI approaches to understand patient journeys, discover biological mechanisms that drive patient outcomes and identify primary causes of disease, enabling the discovery and development of targeted medicines for patients with unmet medical needs.
AstraZeneca will complete the construction of an office building on its Cambridge campus, near its headquarters. It will also build a lab that will use digital and data tools to advance drug development at its Macclesfield site.
