UK The signing of an agreement on the terms of a future trade relationship between Japan and the UK has been welcomed by the UK pharma industry, which counts Japan as its third largest export destination. However, with the Japanese government having previously expressed concern about uncertainties arising from the Brexit…

UK US Merck (MSD globally) is following through on a 2017 commitment to invest in a new early research hub in central London, with plans to open the ‘London Discovery Research Centre’ by 2025.   Having announced that the hub would be built in 2017, one year after the UK’s vote…

UK Jameel Zayed of Leyton, the UK’s leading innovation funding consultancy, highlights the British pharmaceutical industry’s rapid response to COVID-19 and the three ways in which the sector is driving national innovation forwards.   With the upheaval of recent months, businesses up and down the UK have been forced to adapt…

Roundup Below we highlight some recent developments in pharma and healthcare in the UK, including drug shortages in British intensive care units (ICUs), COVID-19 drug trials, biotech deals and market access developments.   Coronavirus leading to ICU drug shortages In the UK the coronavirus pandemic is leading to shortages of drugs…

Coronavirus The world’s two leading vaccine producers, GSK of the UK and France’s Sanofi, last week announced that they are working together to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19); an unprecedented agreement that shows the scale of the challenge facing the global biopharmaceutical industry and possibly provides the world’s…

UK With Brexit now confirmed, the UK government has been playing up the country’s scientific credentials. The aim is to cement the UK’s position as one of the world’s top life science investment destinations and multinational pharma firms including Novartis are already taking note.   “Tangible Opportunity” In February 2020, the…

UK Friday January 31 2020 was officially dubbed “Brexit Day” as the UK finally left the EU, following British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s sweeping election victory on a promise to “Get Brexit Done”.   The UK now enters an 11-month transition period to disentangle political and economic ties from a single…

UK Although biotech financing in the UK took a hit last year in large part thanks to uncertainty around Brexit, 2019 was still the British industry’s third-best year on record.   The UK’s exit from the European Union looms large over all British industries, including pharmaceuticals and biotech. Unsurprisingly, therefore, UK…

Cannabis GW Pharmaceuticals reports that sales of its CBD drug Epidiolex more than doubled in the second quarter of 2019, demonstrating that cannabinoid-based medicines can be highly profitable and potentially blazing a trail for other pharmaceutical companies to follow.   With more and more countries moving to legalise medical cannabis and…

UK Formed in 2015, listed UK start-up Amryt targets rare diseases with high unmet medical need. With one commercial asset on the market, a strong pipeline of development assets and a commercial infrastructure across the EMEA region already in place, the company is aiming to expand rapidly.   We have expanded…

HIV Hopes have been raised of a cure for AIDS after a patient in London became free of the HIV virus following a bone marrow transplant.   Although it is not a viable large-scale strategy for a cure … these new findings reaffirm our belief that there exists a proof of…

GW Pharma Founded in 1998, GW Pharmaceuticals is a British biopharmaceutical company, best known for being the only company with a license to cultivate cannabis in the UK. True pioneers, they are the producers of Sativex and Epiodiolex, the former being the world’s first prescription medicine derived from the cannabis plant —…