Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
industrialised countries, a decline in direct research funding during the 1990s has
necessitated a search for new sources of funding and the adoption of new approaches
to develop collaborative working relations with industry.
In the 1980s and 1990s, in relation to the US, Europe also experienced reduced
investment in R&D and declining competitiveness of the pharmaceutical and other
high technology industries, as evidenced by a lower expenditure on business R&D
(as measured by the percentage of GDP allocated to these activities), a slower
rate of increase in the number of new patents and lower university licensing rev-
enues (http://www.oecd.org). Concerned with its declining competitiveness, the
EU sought to create a “knowledge-based economy” through the Lisbon Agenda
(http://www.ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs) by actively encouraging investment in
R&D and partnering between universities, small businesses (such as biotech com-
panies), and well-established R&D based companies.
An increase in such university collaborations began in the US with legisla-
tion to allow the commercial use of university research (Bayh Dole, 1980). A
similar increase occurred in UK after 1986 when Government privatised agen-
cies such as the National Research and Development Corporation (now BTG plc
http://www.btgplc.com) and ownership of inventions arising from UK Universities
could be commercialised by the inventing institution or in partnership with other
organisations. This encouraged the creation of a large number of small companies
in the BioPharma sector. By the end of 2003, there were around 1,830 companies
in US and 1,484 companies in Europe which listed biotechnology as their primary
activity (UKTI, 2005).
The UK Government has identified health sector as a key investment area and in
2003 commissioned a report on “Improving National Health, Increasing National
Wealth” that mapped out sector investment priorities until 2015 with increased
support for university knowledge-transfer groups (BIGT, 2003). Simultaneously in
the UK, the Healthcare Industries Task Force was established to develop a closer
working relationship between the government and the private sector with the aim of
exploring issues of common interest and identifying opportunities for cooperation
that would bring benefits for patients, health and social care services and industry
(HITF, 2004). By 2005, UK was home to nearly half of Europe's publicly quoted
biotechnology companies (UKTI, 2005). In spite of major government programmes
to encourage university collaborations with these companies and substantial invest-
ment, very few studies explore the impact of these initiatives specifically analyse
whether partnering has led to the achievement of the expected benefits or explore
the nature and extent of these partnerships and the key issues faced by the partnering
organisations.
In this paper we review the empirical research on R&D partnering in the
BioPharma sector. Through primary research and using semi-structured interviews
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