Lord Sainsbury

At the end of April the UK minister for science, Lord Sainsbury, launched a fact-finding mission to highlight possible barriers to the development of biotechnology firms in the UK. As part of the initiative, Sainsbury and his team of five industry experts including Chris Evans, chair of the newly merged venture capital firm Merlin Bioscience (see p. 528), are focusing on the problems facing clusters—groups of biotechnology firms formed through university spinouts with links to investors for funding. (The majority of the UK's biotechnology firms are based in clusters around Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.) However, companies wanting to establish manufacturing facilities in these areas are restricted by space. "We don't want companies to be forced to move, as this will cause the cluster to break down," explains Peter Nolan, chair of Oxfordshire Biolink—formerly with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI; London), and also director of operations at Oxford Biomedica (Oxford, UK)—which was established in April to network the Oxford cluster firms, helping them to develop faster through voluntary sharing of experience and business knowledge. Sainsbury's findings and recommendations, expected to be published next month, will be implemented by the DTI.