A Warm Welcome from Tony Jones This yearly publication provides the opportunity for us to reflect on a year of One Nucleus activities, to highlight some of the successes and insights gained by our members and wider Life Sciences sector as they progress their businesses and take a look forward in terms of plans for the year ahead. In addition, it enables us to set out the characteristics of our network, the engagement opportunities available and some of the One Nucleus thinking around how we support our members going forward. And what a year it has been between March 2020 and writing this article. Greater details of some of the trends, deal highlights and thought leadership in key areas are set out in the articles that follow. In this section I would just like to offer you a warm welcome to the One Nucleus Annual Review and set the scene for the subsequent content. Progress in unprecedented times It would be impossible to reflect on the past year without considering the context of Covid-19, how the sector has been successful in responding to create diagnostics, vaccines, treatments to combat Covid-19 as well as generating an immense amount of scientific understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is still a long way to go to fully understand the virus and indeed how to live with it, but it has undoubtedly been a year of unprecedented progress and collaboration at scale. From the strong academic base through to large multinational pharma; including the innovative SMEs; their professional advisers and investors, it is hard to see any segment of the One Nucleus membership that has not been actively involved in helping the world deal with the pandemic. It should not be forgotten that progress was not only against Covid-19. There have been many significant product development, investment and technological advance highlights in other therapeutic areas throughout the year. This breadth of success illustrating the resilience and adaptability of the Life Science institutes and companies to remain so active. Sector Highlights Globally, it has been reported that biotech raised $42 billion in 2020 across 1851 deals (A Khemlani), a massive 46% increase over 2019 in terms of money raised yet only a 4% increase in deal numbers. Closer to home, the UK Life Science sector also had a record year, raising £2.4Bn. The current year is on course to be an even greater value if the deal activity remains high. Clarivate/BIA notably reporting last month that £830 million having been raised in the three months to the end of February 2021 – almost as much as the first six months of 2020. Mergers and acquisitions have been stellar also. Business Weekly reporting that M&A deals in the previous year for the Cambridge region alone had topped £100 billion. The increased popularity of SPACs (special purpose acquisition vehicles) is seeing traditionally earlier stage investors be more involved companies going to IPO. Is this growth in interest driven by the spotlight now placed on the value the sector can bring to society and will investment levels scale down when interest rates start to rise, perhaps 2021 will begin to provide some answers.
4 | One Nucleus Annual Review & Directory 2021/2022
