Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
However, the views of key informants on the adequacy of government support
for partnering remained mixed. For example, one company informant observed
that although he liked the recommendations of the Lambert Report, he felt the
expectations were raised too high, commenting: “people don't seem to have read
[the report] and some universities are aiming to raise too much money” from their
licensing and partnering activities. Most agreed that it was still too early to see the
full effect of these government interventions.
Box 2. Examples of State interventions to develop R&D partnerships.
NIH Protein Structure Initiative
In July 2005, the US National Institute of Health announced a $48.5 million
award to Structural Genomix and the New York Structural Genomix Research
Consortium to “produce proteins for structure determination for the collaboration”
and provide access to crystallography facilities for its industrial and academic
collaborators (http://www.scriptnews.com, 8 July 2005).
MédiTech Santé
July 2005 also brought news of the French Government's plan to create six world-
class “poles of competitiveness” in a
1.5 billion knowledge transfer initiative,
to include the MédiTech Santé health and biotech cluster in Paris and the Lyon-
biopole vaccine and diagnostic cluster in the Rhone Valley. Both of these Bio-
Pharma clusters are supported by companies such as Sanofi Aventis, Servier,
GSK and Institut Pasteur (Paris) and BioMérieux, Sanofi-Pasteur, Merial and Du
Puy/J&J (Lyon), together with a number of publicly funded research institutions.
R&D partnerships are very much a part of these clusters, with the overall intent
“to keep France in the forefront of pharmaceutical innovation and production”
(http://www.scriptnews.com, 20 July 2005).
e
The London Biotechnology Network
The biotech community in London has seen the benefit of a series of networking
meetings organised over the last three years in the form of the London Biotech-
nology Network. These Wednesday evening meetings have been supported finan-
cially by London's Development Agency and inward investment agency, London
First, and have spawned an annual conference and exhibition held in December.
The network provides firms with the opportunity to find out what is happening in
the London area and meet potential partners in an informal environment free of
charge for members (http://www.biolondon.org).
Overall, most respondents felt that UK and EU support for innovation in R&D
was inadequate. Some UK initiatives were welcomed, and in particular DTI work-
shops were identified as being “a good place to meet potential partners”. The DTI
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