A founding father of the Cambridge biotechnology cluster says its leading innovators have come late to the life science funding feast in global terms, despite recent successes.

Having missed out in many respects on the primary party, Cambridge biotechs are set for a second coming with the world’s leading Big Pharma companies now camped on Cambridge’s doorstep. 

Their presence should ensure that the city’s bio brainpower is finally rewarded in a new wave of investments focused on a larger slice of the cake rather than scattered crumbs, says Dr Andy Richards.

Dr Richards helped Sir Chris Evans take Cambridge from a bio backwater onto the international stage. As chair of a stable of UK life science thoroughbreds, he is well placed to put recent perceived glories into proper perspective.

In the space of seven days recently, Cambridge ophthalmic gene therapy business Quethera Ltd was bought for $109m by Japanese company Astellas Pharma Inc; Artios Pharma raised $84m Series B to progress DNA cancer solutions and Abzena was sold in a near-$44 million acquisition to Astro Bidco Limited, a new company wholly-owned by the WCAS Fund in New York.

Dr Richards told Business Weekly: “The Abzena deal was perhaps not surprising but ultimately disappointing from where they were in the early days.”

On that particular transaction, another biotech entrepreneur contacted Business Weekly to say: “In reality Abzena had raised £120m and were sold for £35m.”

Dr Richards added: “The Abzena deal does say something about how UK public investors drive companies in our sector towards particular business models in contrast to how they get pushed on Nasdaq. Horizon Discovery has experienced some of the same pressures I suspect.”

He added: “The Artios financing was excellent but there have been quite a few of these and not just Cambridge specific – look at Orchard Therapeutics in London – and, of course, big rounds are the norm in Boston Massachusetts which is where we should be looking to compete. Quethera was another good outcome.

“I would argue that we have the quality of companies, science and management in many cases to warrant these larger rounds but have been slower in realising these than we should have been.  

“In terms of where the money has been coming from, for a good few years now the money coming into Cambridge life science has been much more international than home grown. We did a comprehensive analysis at Babraham for Babraham Campus companies and it was quite revealing. 

“The profile of Cambridge life science companies is such that all the major pharmaceutical companies are hunting here and on the ground.”

Dr Richards, as chairman, is helping to hatch another exciting Cambridge startup – Closed Loop Medicine – which is still in stealth but which would appear to have huge potential. 

Closed Loop was established at the interface of the UK’s leading biotech, genomic and digital technology companies. It uses the concept of convergence to create new closed-loop models of care, integrating real-time feedback to optimise outcomes for patients. What cannot be hidden is that the business has a genuinely dynamic and accomplished team headed up by Hakim Yadi and Paul Goldsmith.

The concept has been incubating  for some time and is now up and running with seed investment from a set of Cambridge Angels along with Longwall Ventures. Another funding round is in the hatching, Business Weekly understands.

Dr Richards is one of the most successful life sciences entrepreneurs in the UK. He has founded and scaled many innovative biotech and healthtech companies, including Chiroscience, Vectura, Arakis, Arecor, Congenica, Abcodia, Ieso and Silence Therapeutics. 

He also sits on the board of Cancer Research Technology and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is an advisor to Cambridge Innovation Capital and the UCL Closed Loop co-founder Dr Paul Goldsmith is a consultant physician with a triple first from Cambridge and a clinical scholarship from Oxford. His PhD utilised the simplicity of developmental biology to understand complex human disease. 

He went on to co-found and help build two drug discovery and two digital health companies. He also has extensive NHS systems and strategic experience, including Clinical Networks, Vanguard and Clinical Senate roles.

Dr Yadi is the founding CEO of the Northern Health Science Alliance Ltd (NHSA) and is at the forefront of establishing multi-partner collaborations between healthcare systems and leading industry from medtech to pharma, biotech and digital health companies. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge. 

Dr Yadi was awarded an OBE for services to healthcare technology and the economy in the 2017 New Years Honours List.

Fellow founder Dr David Cox has built a career operating on the boundaries between healthcare, technology and business. He practiced medicine for several years before pursuing a management career, gaining experience first at McKinsey & Co. 

For several years now he has focused on the growing promise of digital health, starting his own health app company, and then moving on to help grow other startups in senior management positions. He is a mentor on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Training programme.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Andy Richards