East of England Data

Developing Tomorrow’s Drug Pipeline – an Overview of the East of England Collective Assets

No one will argue with the success of Cambridge and the East of England as a therapeutics life science cluster. We’ve all seen these figures of the scientific excellence – 61 Nobel prizes in relevant subjects; economic powerhouse – £6bn turnover growing about 10% annually. But is it enough to be the place of choice to develop tomorrow’s therapeutics? In an ever-increasing complex sector with more convergence of technologies it’s not just about having innovative ideas and the right amount of cash – although it helps… but it’s about having the right value chain to supply technology support, fuelling the talent cross fertilisation and creating a virtuous circle of value creation. So how does the East of England drug pipeline look and what does it tell us about the regional strengths?

An overview of the current drug pipeline

A representation of the regional drug pipeline like here helps us understand the development stage and dynamic of companies developing these therapeutics. Deliberately excluding the large Pharmaceutical companies emphasizes on the group dynamic rather than the individual leader. The learning here is that with just under 100 SMEs having a recorded drug pipeline, the overall distribution is rather early stage, about 2/3 of the pipeline is in non-clinical phases which, compared to the reference cluster Massachusetts, is two-fold higher. Digging into the data it appears that only a quarter of the pipeline is small molecules, the rest being spread between antibodies, biologics, cell and gene therapy and new modalities. And without surprise, oncology dominates the therapeutic areas of application accounting for a third of all indications. This rather early stage pipeline mainly in innovative modalities requires strong technology support to develop which is actually what the other 70+ life science innovative SMEs in the East of England are doing.

Innovation in drug discovery

With only 10% of what is considered as the ‘druggable genome’ targeted by approved drugs and most of the current research, there is a big potential for disturbing the drug discovery game that East of England companies are clearly addressing. About a dozen companies are deploying their expertise in -omics, epigenetics disease biomarkers, exploring the ‘dark genome’ as well as scouting ‘cryptic’ druggable sites. And these claims are not only trendy technologies, they are exciting the curiosity of drug developers like Boehringer Ingelheim and Otsuka, to name a few with no R&D presence in the cluster, who are increasing their outreach to these companies, providing credibility and expertise to these local companies to keep fuelling an innovative drug pipeline.

The power of data

If there is one concept that cannot be foreign to a drug pipeline it is ‘Data’. Whether it’s for disease modelling, chemistry simulation, patient segmentation, there is a range of strong expertise in the East of England thanks to world renowned leading academic institutions like EBI as well as the deep knowledge of therapeutics development brought by a long history of pharmaceutical company presence. But with the rise of so called ‘biodata’ or ‘AI’ experts, comes the difficulty to discern the credible companies to the ones surfing the trends and here again regional stakeholders stand out by the quality of collaborations, capacity to attract investors – over £100M cumulative in the last 12 months – and a clear objective of developing wet lab research – BenevolentAI 5,000 sq. ft. on Babraham Campus.

Making drugs

But of course, all this innovation in disease understanding and new targets identification would not mean anything without the capacity to actually develop therapeutics. And here again the East of England is home to over 20 really innovative technology service companies covering an outstanding range of scientific expertise. It is with no surprise that half of them specialise in therapeutics antibody development. But what is making this ecosystem so strong is the span of company size, ranging from the smaller companies with a strong niche expertise like Metrion in ion channel, to the large international corporate like Charles River or Lonza with the ability to cover multi-disciplinary projects. These companies not only represent a necessary asset to support the regional drug pipeline but often overlooked benefits are also their great source of economic growth – by being mostly revenue driven companies – and talent development. These companies are home to over 1200 scientific employees who are exposed to the most innovative technologies in the context of drug discovery and development.

Optimising processes

Finally, often neglected contributors in the drug development game are the tools providers and here again the East of England has a tremendous innovative capacity translating in drug development process optimisation. Optimising process is not just about the cost, it is a crucial element of scientific data consistency essential to innovation. For example, in the region, the classic antibody or cell line producers become innovative powerhouses like Abcam or Horizon Discovery spreading their scientific expertise worldwide as well as attracting public market investment on the London Stock Exchange. But with the development of more complex modalities to understand for example, the rise of cell and gene therapy, scientific tools must be more sophisticated and this is where more recent companies like bit bio, Mogrify or Qkine come into the play contributing to the high level of innovation in the East of England pipeline. Taking a step further and looking at the converging discipline capacity, the East of England is also home to companies with high levels of engineering innovation in the field of automation of cell screening like Lightcast Discovery or organs on chip like CN Bio or Stemnovate with successful on going collaborations with drug developers that are other strong assets in the region drug pipeline development.

Nurturing local sources of uniqueness

If the East of England has a strong innovative value chain built around a rather early stage drug pipeline, it is also not short of great headlines about tangible patient benefits. Examples like Astex Pharmaceuticals getting another FDA approval for a cancer drug or Astrazeneca contributing to the development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 show how our sector and the East of England in particular is delivering tangible society benefits. This review was not intending to overlook these but to highlight that these headlines may not be possible without the strong technology and innovation regional base that contributes to the regional attractiveness. An example is the level of investment so far in 2020 which is reaching a cumulative $100M in ‘technology support’ companies, an impressive figure for companies less cash demanding and with potential for revenue generation. Working through the East of England drug pipeline was a way to deliver an honest picture of the regional collective assets and question its potential weaknesses – is an early stage drug pipeline a cash burner? Or to convert into a strength, how it could be perceived as a very innovative and much more agile ecosystem being more attractive to talent, technology solutions and investors. Which in that sense could constitute these ‘local sources of uniqueness’ a certain Michael Porter mentioned as the key to cluster competitive advantage and therefore so important to know and nurture.