Horizon Discovery, the world leading gene editing business anchored in Cambridge, is toasting triple success in a major UK life science competition.

The Cambridge Research Park company, which is leading the charge towards personalised medicines, won three major accolades at last night’s annual Biotech and Money Awards in London.

Cambridge companies took three-quarters of the prizes on offer – nine out of the 12.

Horizon was named UK Public Life Science Company of the Year; this followed the company being voted Quoted Company of the Year in the Business Weekly Awards in March.

Horizon, together with strategic communications agency Consillium won Life Science Communication Strategy of the Year. Bringing up the treble in style, CEO Dr Darrin Disley was named UK Public Life Science CEO of the Year.

F-star and Artios Pharma each won two awards and Bicycle Therapeutics and Microbiotica claimed one apiece. 

Artios Pharma, based at the Babraham Research Campus in Cambridge won the Life Science Young Company of the Year and UK Private Finance Raise of the Year awards. Artios Pharma was established in May 2016 to build an innovative DNA Damage Response (DDR) target pipeline with the potential to transform cancer therapy. Artios has in-licensed its lead programme, PolƟ, from Cancer Research Technology, the development and commercialisation arm of Cancer Research UK, and continues to work with CRT and other experts in the field to build its pipeline of novel DDR programmes.

Fellow Babraham company F-star won UK Life Science Deal of the Year while its CEO John Haurum won the Private Sector Lifescience CEO of the Year award. F-star is developing immuno-oncology bispecific antibody therapeutics. It is preparing to dominate the bispecific antibody space in immuno-oncology through the application of its highly efficient Modular Antibody Technology™ platform. 

The platform enables the discovery of novel bispecific antibodies, which are selected for their potential to transform the treatment of cancer. 

The UK Private Life Science Growth Company of the Year award went to another Babraham-based company, Bicycle Therapeutics. Bicycle is developing first in class medicines to treat cancer and other debilitating diseases. Its bicyclic peptides (Bicycles®) are designed to rapidly penetrate the tumour, delivering payloads selectively to where they are needed while minimising exposure to normal tissue and associated toxicities.

Microbiotica at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge was crowned  UK Life Science Spin-Out of the Year. Microbiotica was launched in December 2016 with the aim of creating a global leader to exploit the leading microbiome science built at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. 

The company retains a close association with the Sanger Institute and its founders. Microbiotica identifies gut bacteria linked to phenotype with unprecedented precision in order to discover and develop live bacterial therapeutics and biomarkers.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Horizon Discovery CEO, Dr Darrin Disley

The Department for International Trade (DIT) – East of England is running a seminar in Norwich  to help manufacturing and engineering businesses boost sales in overseas markets.

Growing your sales in international markets for manufacturing and engineering businesses brings its own set of challenges. Here in the East of England, we are delivering a series of unique seminars to help you understand how to win new deals overseas.

We are bringing together some of the most successful manufacturing and engineering firms from our region, to share how they have overcome the barriers to make a success of selling into:

• South America
• Asia
• Middle East

In addition, we have workshops dedicated to help you understand some of the more technical elements of taking your product into new markets. We have representatives from:

• Intellectual Property Office
• DIT’s Export Control Office
• DIT’s Trade Policy Team

Click here to book your free ticket

For more information contact: 01707 398 398 or email eastInfo [at] mobile.trade.gov.uk (subject: International%20Manufacturing%20and%20Engineering%20Workshop)

Cambridge-based Ieso Digital Health, the UK’s largest provider of online mental healthcare, has closed an £18 million funding round to accelerate growth in its home market and the commercialisation of its transformative technology platform in the US. 

The funding round is the largest amount raised by a digital behavioural health business in Europe.

Ieso is already transforming mental health delivery in the UK, by making high quality, evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) available to more than nine million people.

The technology is available through the NHS as part of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies.

Relative to international duration of treatment, Ieso is able to increase the speed at which people recover in treatment by as much as 50 per cent. By the end of 2017, more than 100,000 therapy hours will have been delivered, making Ieso the UK’s largest provider of online CBT.

Ieso’s published and auditable outcomes have been consistently superior to NHS averages in the most commonly presenting mental health conditions and its breakthrough service has recently been introduced in the US.

The business has assembled one of the most experienced mental healthcare management teams to drive adoption in both markets comprising world class data scientists, renowned Artificial Intelligence development experts, first class clinicians, outstanding therapists and highly experienced executive leadership. 

CEO Dan Clark said: “This financing is a great vote of confidence in Ieso’s ability to become a global leader in mental health delivery and our technology which lies at the intersection of online evidence-based CBT, dynamic artificial intelligence learning, real time therapist support and mobile accessibility, ultimately creating high quality, accessible CBT therapy.

“Up to 60 per cent of people in the US alone have unmet behavioural health needs. This presents a major opportunity for Ieso to make a radical impact on healthcare outcomes and costs.

“With our technology and clinical data science we are simultaneously improving patient outcomes and reducing costs to the healthcare system.”

The funding round introduces to Ieso leading venture capital investor Draper Esprit, which co-led this round, committing £7.5m alongside existing investor Touchstone Innovations, which invested £8m.

The round will have two closes to permit investment from other current investors including a number of significant UK business angels and the Ananda Social Venture Fund, whose investment director, Lennart Hergel added: “The Ieso story is a textbook example of social impact investment working in partnership with commercial technology funding as the company scales.”

Cambridge video games creator Frontier Developments is making a bull charge towards founder and chief executive David Braben’s vision of being a global leader in hi-tech entertainment.

Record full-year results including a 550 per cent operating profits increase capped an impressive transition of the business and sent shares 89p higher to 1,209 on the UK’s stockmarket at one stage this morning.

And Braben said there was more to come as Frontier unveiled a new franchise and accelerated output in terms of releasing future games.

Figures for the year to May 31 reflect the company’s successful transition to a business-to-consumer video game developer with multiple self-published revenue generating franchises. 

The launch of its second franchise, Planet Coaster, combined with continued strong performance from Elite Dangerous drove a step-up in all financial measures. Frontier’s third franchise, based on the Jurassic World movie franchise, is on track for launch in summer 2018.

The company told shareholders in a statement: “After successfully proving our ability to launch franchises our ambition is to continue our evolution to create a self-publishing multi-franchise success story.

“Ongoing investment in our people, organisation and facilities, supported by the proceeds from the £17.7 million strategic investment by Tencent completed in July 2017, will enable the business to continue scaling up.”

The investment by Tencent, a leading Internet and interactive entertainment company based in China, will improve and accelerate Frontier’s growth into the key Chinese market and help drive scale-up of the business.

Braben said: “We have successfully transitioned our business model and I am delighted with the performance of both Planet Coaster and Elite Dangerous. Our next franchise, Jurassic World Evolution, is in development and scheduled for launch in summer 2018. We believe that developing our business to achieve repeatable success requires scale. 
 
“We are continuing to grow our capability and over time we aim to double our output, from roughly one major launch every two years, to one every 12 months or so.

“I’d like to thank our fantastic team who have already achieved so much and to our many players around the world who continue to make it all possible.  However, we are at the start of our journey; our long term ambition is to become a global leader in entertainment and Tencent’s recent strategic investment will help drive our scale-up plans.”

Full-year revenues soared 75 per cent to £37.4 million and operating profit was up 550 per cent to £7.8m. Frontier has also hoisted its net cash balance to £12.6m from £8.6m.

Frontier has unveiled another coup, luring Stewart Stanbury from Alphabet Inc’s Google as director of marketing with immediate effect.

With expertise in digital marketing and branding for technology and games, Stanbury is expected to strengthen Frontier’s marketing team as the company scales up the number and frequency of franchise releases. At Google he was industry manager for Branding for three and a half years, and prior to that for business markets from 2012 to 2014.

• IMAGE: Jurassic World Evolution – courtesy of Frontier Developments

Join us to learn the step by step way to reach international growth. Starting with the current export climate we will move on to cover the best route to market for your business and the other considerations which include costs, pricing & payment terms. We will also visit a subject that often gets overlooked, the aspect of Language and Culture. 

Our experts have many years of knowledge and experience which makes them perfect to offer you first hand advice. The Q & A session which concludes the workshop, will give you the opportunity to relate the topics covered to your business and receive specific guidance on moving forward with growth.

AGENDA

9.00 to 9.15am REGISTRATION
   
9.15 to 9.25am WELCOME FROM ESSEX CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND ENTERPRISE EUROPE NETWORK (Who are we and what can we do for you)
 
9.25 to 9.50am WHERE ARE WE NOW (The importance of a review prior to negotiating)
 
9.50 to 10.15am ROUTES TO MARKET (The seven routes to market – which one suits your business best)
 
10.15 to 10.35am COSTING (The major influencing factors on costing both internally and externally)
 
10.35 to 10.45am INCOTERMS (What are incoterms and what do they mean)
 
10.45 to 11.00am BREAK
   
11.00 to 11.45am PRICING  (What influences pricing structure, both internal and external factors)
 
11.45 to 12.30pm QUOTATIONS (How to raise a quotation, what to incorporate, how to present it and follow up)
 
12.30 to 1.00pm LUNCH AND NETWORKING
   
1.00 to 1.30pm PAYMENT TERMS (Which payment method suits you, how to ensure you get paid and the role of your bank)
 
1.30 to 2.00pm LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS  (Considerations: the implication of negotiations)
 
2.00 to 2.30pm CONCLUSIONS AND QUESTIONS (Review and conclusions  and advice to individual companies)

Course presenter: 
Steve Exon has been actively exporting for the last thirty years and has worked in some 50 countries. During this time he has written and presented the Export Masterclass, advised on the Enterprise Initiative Scheme – exporting and business planning – and was senior facilitator on the UKTI Passport to Export Programme. On top of his presenting roles Steve runs a successful consultancy company in the UK, a research company in Australia and is a non-exective Director for a number of British companies.
 

Enterprise Europe Network East is delighted to present a unique series of breakfast events in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University, to help businesses to innovate, internationalise, support and protect their business to grow. 

It offers the opportunity to attend three individual two hour breakfasts on subjects that will help your business to succeed at The MedBIC, Chelmsford. Presented by one of our Enterprise Europe Network Innovation Advisers, each event gives practical advice and offers support.  

The first in the series is Innovation Matters on the Thursday 28th September 2017. In this presentation we will discuss what innovation really means and why it is important for small businesses to be innovating. 

We will explore the innovation journey from Intellectual Property through to commercialisation and cover the existing innovation support landscape. The final part of the presentation will highlight how Enterprise Europe Network can support SMEs in their innovation journey through a range of free services.

The agenda will be as follows:

· Arrival and Networking

· Presentation

· Q&A

· Networking

Please note that food and light refreshments are included. Free of charge to attend.

Autonomous vehicle technology pioneer FiveAI has clinched a cash haul of almost £27 million through a mix of Series A equity finance and a grant from the UK government and can now take on their deep pocketed US rivals head-to-head.

With operations in Cambridge and other UK tech hubs, FiveAI was named Business Weekly’s Startup of the Year in March for its potential to develop the complex software brain required for safe driverless vehicles.

Headed up by Midas touch serial entrepreneur Stan Boland, FiveAI’s double-headed windfall represents just the start of an incredible journey for the young company which is educating driverless car manufacturers about what they really need technology-wise to make their vehicles safe.

Boland envisages that FiveAi will need to target £50m all told to get the technology into practical, proven commercial use.

The surging appeal of Cambridge technology to global investors was demonstrated again in the £14m Series A round that made up more than half of the money just raised.

The Government has chipped in £12.8m to back FiveAI’s StreetWise project which will bring a driverless car trial to London in 2019.

Lakestar Capital, which led the round, is headquartered in Zurich and is also on the ground in Berlin and London. Existing investors – Hermann Hauser’s Amadeus Capital Partners, Notion Capital and Kindred – also participated. 

The Series A investment is thought to be the largest single venture funding for any European driverless technology startup to date while the combined total of £26.8m puts FiveAI in pole position to take on the driverless tech giants in the US.

Lakestar Capital’s Dharmash Mistry, who will join the FiveAI board on completion of the funding round, said: “FiveAI is a fantastic example where the UK has the talent, ambition and market to build a truly successful technology-led company. 

“Dense European cities present totally different technical, behavioural, regulatory and infrastructure challenges to their US and Chinese counterparts for safe urban driverless technologies.

“By assembling its talented team in the UK and seeking to support London’s transport objectives in partnership with the city itself, FiveAI can play a vital role in reducing congestion, emissions, costs, accidents and journey times, boosting the city economy at the same time.”

StreetWise brings several major parties alongside FiveAI to deliver a safe trial driverless car service in London towards the end of 2019. They include the UK’s largest private motor insurer Direct Line Group and McLaren Applied Technologies, McLaren Group’s advanced technology, innovation and design company.

With the University of Oxford and TRL contributing cutting-edge research in the fields of computer vision and safety respectively, StreetWise is a de facto national competitor to several large US technology companies like Google’s Waymo and Uber, who might otherwise seek to lock-up major European cities’ future transport systems.

The opportunity to build a true competitor caught the eye of the Government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and through Innovate UK, it provided financial support, conditional upon private funding now met by FiveAI’s Series A.

Business and Energy Secretary, Greg Clark, said: “Low carbon and self-driving vehicles are the future and the UK has a great opportunity to lead this technology revolution.

“The Government is determined to ensure the UK becomes the go-to place for the development of the next generation of vehicles as part of our Industrial Strategy.

“Government investment, through our Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, in the StreetWise Consortium has helped FiveAI to attract significant inward investment for a project that will help build on our expertise and reputation in self-driving technology and support our clean growth, low-carbon agenda.”

Alongside CEO Stan Boland, who has exited his two previous companies for a combined total of over $1 billion, FiveAI boasts a growing team of world-leading scientific talent, including academic heavyweights in the fields of computer vision, perception, motion planning and machine learning. 

The new cash will allow FiveAI to develop and demonstrate autonomous SAE level 4 urban technology and a model for its use in a novel form of personal mobility service aimed at individuals currently driving some or all of their daily commute. 

FiveAI is targeting 2019 to launch a supervised trial of a pilot fleet of autonomous vehicles on London roads. The trial will show that the technology is now sufficiently mature to be safe in urban environments and sufficiently intelligent to co-exist with human drivers, road users and pedestrians.

The StreetWise project will also demonstrate how this technology can be used to build compelling service offers to recover commuting time, reduce commuting costs, cut accident rates, reduce congestion and lower emissions. Streetwise is partnering with Transport for London (TfL) to ensure its service offering is always aligned to public transportation needs.

Boland said: “London has one of the best public transport systems in the world. Cycling, walking, buses and trains offer a great service for most commuters but some journeys are still being served by personal or individual transport. 

“Initially we’ll target these journeys with our shared mobility solution which will also pave the way for potential large-scale autonomous public transport in the future. In the short term, from day one of service launch the StreetWise project will increase public transport usage, reduce congestion and emissions, and make our urban areas more liveable for all.”

Hermann Hauser added: “FiveAI represents the UK’s best opportunity to build a major, responsible player in autonomous vehicles. They have the team, the technology and now, with key support from the UK government, the capital to become our next industry-defining tech company.”

FiveAI was founded in September 2015 with the ambition of leveraging the UK’s Artificial Intelligence and machine learning talent into a huge, important company that can be a force for good in the UK’s transport sector. The company has teams in Cambridge, Bristol, Edinburgh and Oxford.

Recent research into artificial intelligence has made autonomous technology possible. FiveAI’s engineers are building on this research to implement the complex software brain of tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles. This software must be robust in all potential mobility environments and situations; being aware of other road users likely actions before they happen and ensuring that vehicles powered by our software drive safely and just as other road users would expect.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Stan Boland

The £10 million Series A round just revealed by Cambridge AI startup PROWLER.io is a stepping stone to creating another ARM for Cambridge, according to CEO Vishal Chatrath.

Whether that milestone is achieved as an independent or under the umbrella of an international giant will be down to the board at the relevant time but Chatrath “strongly believes” PROWLER.io will emulate ARM’s amazing achievements as a sustainable world number one.

The international investment community clearly believes it, too, as the Series A haul saw global investor Atlantic Bridge Capital and SGInnovate of Singapore join a round led by Cambridge Innovation Capital. 

While many other Cambridge technology businesses struggle to recruit skilled staff to scale internationally Chatrath revealed that highly talented new technicians and global customers were beating a path to PROWLER.io’s door.

Headcount has grown way ahead of expectations to 50 from a standing start and that should double some time in 2018. The company already boasts 22 different nationalities among its employees.

“They are applying from almost everywhere to join us, although we have not had anyone from Antarctica respond as yet,” Chatrath said. He is determined that however big the company gets, whether it remains independent or is swallowed by a global heavyweight, Cambridge will always be the nerve centre. 

“From foundation I was determined that Cambridge was absolutely key to the success of our technology and our business. It is the best place on earth to continue as our hub. I have worked all over the world and there is nowhere on the planet better than Cambridge for building and continuing to grow a sustainable business of this nature,” he says.

PROWLER.io’s principled decision-making platform makes it possible to perceive and affect the ways agents – such as vehicles, drones, robots, characters in games and even people – interact in complex environments. Its probabilistic models enable customers to understand, guide and optimise the millions of micro-decisions that can occur in dynamic systems. The platform also provides safe, effective ways to test and validate emerging technologies.

PROWLER.io has the potential to transform complex systems design and implementation. The platform is principled in the sense that its core technology is founded on mathematical principles from three previously segregated fields: probabilistic modelling, machine learning and game theory. 

The resulting synergy of ideas and methodologies makes possible for the first time a platform whose decisions are clearly based on interpretable principles. 

The technology is set to revolutionise sectors such as games development, smart cities and autonomous vehicles and the financial sector is engaging with the company big time.

Physical expansion into new geographical territories from a Cambridge springboard  is a given, says Chatrath. The first overseas office is being established in Finland to target the finance industry and the second will be Singapore to look at opportunities in smart cities.

PROWLER.io is using the new £10m to expand its team of researchers and continue development and commercialisation of its platform.

Chatrath said that all the investors understood the potential power of the technology. While Cambridge Innovation Capital led the round, the arrival of Atlantic Bridge Capital is a significant addition to the big hitting band of backers.

Atlantic is a global technology fund which invests in high growth technology companies in Europe, the US, the Middle East and China. Existing investors Passion Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and SGInnovate reiterated their continued support for the company by participating in the round.

Chatrath was previously head of automotive at Nokia, founder of Chleon Automotive and chief business officer of VocalIQ, which was snapped up by Apple in 2015.

He says: “Many of the big names in our space are narrowly focused on finding uses for their big data – which means they’re feeding huge amounts of data to deep learning neural networks. Our solution means we are already UK number one and taking our entire capability into account we can be regarded as European and even world leader across an holistic machine learning and deep learning portfolio.” 

Chatrath said the best investors followed technology entrepreneurs with a proven track record of building sustainable, world-class companies and PROWLER.io was “tremendously fortunate” to have globally renowned tech pioneers behind it.

Confidence is drawn not just from the quality of the research and technical teams working at the company but also from the experience of the board, he says.

For example, chairman Carl Rasmussen is Professor of Machine Learning at the Department of Engineering of Cambridge University. He has previously held positions at Technical University of Denmark, the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL and the Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen.

Chatrath said: “Building this business from Cambridge has been the key plank of our mission from the very start. I thought that at this stage of our development we might be up to 20 or so staff but we are almost 50 – that puts us one year ahead of our plan. 

“We perceived that recruiting top talent might be our biggest challenge but it hasn’t turned out that way. The floodgates have opened in terms of talent and customers approaching us.”

Chatrath said PROWLER.io had headed through its window of opportunity with a “shock and awe” strategy. “There are other businesses out there involved in the space and I knew we had to be aggressive from the moment we opened out doors.

“If we had waited even six months we could have been overtaken and lost our advantage. Now we have the most envied technology and best people on the planet.”

Even with £10m banked in the Series A round, Chatrath is thinking ahead to securing further scale-up with fresh, ongoing investment.

“As CEO the reality is that that the focus on funding never stops. We are financially comfortable for now even having grown faster than originally envisaged. 

“My policy has always been to ensure I raised more money than I actually needed. Our incredibly fast rate of growth at PROWLER.io proves the sense of such a strategy.”

Chatrath is keeping an open mind on whether the company will grow into the next ARM organically or be snapped up by a global giant somewhere along the journey – but he is adamant that the best way to add value for shareholders and investors is to build a sustainable business.

“You can build it from a focus that it will stay independent but the timing of an IPO or acquisition is a different dynamic so you build the best business you can and deal with whatever comes when it comes.”

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Vishal Chatrath

Two Cambridge companies are feeling a million dollars after sharing in an award equating to that amount from Innovate UK to develop what could prove a personalised medicine gamechanger.

ideaSpace-based Stemnovate and ANB Sensors in Cambourne are working to advance ‘liver on a chip’ technology that will improve drug testing and help patients by increasing efficacy and effectiveness and potentially develop individually tailored medicine.

The new stem cell technique negates the need for testing in animals or humans.

Dr Ruchi Sharma, Stemnovate’s CEO, founder and lead on the project, has long been concerned with limitations of animal testing for human drug development due to differences in species physiology.

She said: “It takes 10-15 years to launch a new drug with an average cost of approximately $5 billion. Drug failures and market withdrawal are hugely expensive and pose a great risk to patients.”

She stressed that one of the biggest challenges was figuring out which drug candidates were likely to harm the liver before testing them in humans. The ‘one size fits all,’ approach currently dominant in drug development was suboptimal and often led to drug failure putting patients at risk. 

“This is not surprising; after all there are multiple differences between humans which range from genetic make up, physiology, environment and lifestyle – all of which may interact and limit the drug’s success for individual patients,” she adds.

“Having the organ on a chip, instead of in the human or an animal, has multiple benefits. For starters, it is more ethical as the process does not involve animal or human testing. It is also safer for the patients themselves.”

She said that the new technology enabled identification of problems early in the medicine development process and could reduce cost by as much as $30 million per product launch. It also improves launch success rate by a quarter, she argues.

Stemnovate and ANB Sensors Limited have teamed up with pharma to engineer the system. They claim it can faithfully replicate human liver biology by taking into account patients’ individual genetic backgrounds. This makes the technology more sensitive to individual patient’s circumstances, more accurate and more patient-friendly, according to Dr Nathan Lawrence, CTO at ANB Sensors.

“The team’s aim is to integrate stem cell research and engineering to help patients. Developing such microphysiological models which are representative of human physiology is a big and important part of our project.”

Stemnovate’s co-founders, Professor David Hay and Dr Adrian Fisher have a track record in this type of work. They have developed cutting edge stem cell and Microengineering platform technologies at the University of Edinburgh and in Cambridge.

Dr Hay is group leader at MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine while Dr Fisher runs the electrochemical and micro engineering group in Cambridge in the Centre for Research in Electrochemical Science and Technology (CREST) and within the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) in Singapore.

Their enthusiasm for the potential liver on a chip solution is shared by 
Mario Monshouwer, senior scientific director for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, who believes that such new stem-cell based technologies will transform medicine discovery in the very near future.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Stemnovate CEO Dr Ruchi Sharma 

ambridge has laid out its credentials to drive the next stage of the Government’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy to create jobs, growth and investment for  the whole East of England region.

The university and life science giants AstraZeneca and MedImmune have joined forces with the burgeoning Cambridge Biomedical Campus and pledged to work with the Government and partners in areas identified as major catalysts for growth.

A five-point roadmap highlights:-

• The development of a MedTech Cluster where clinicians and technology companies will work together to develop devices and software to improve healthcare
• A datahub to take advantage of the electronic patient record systems being developed in the NHS which creates a huge pool of real time information to help researchers with their work.
• Assisting with the ‘scaling up’ of companies to ensure they become global players
• Support for the growth in skills and the creation of new jobs across the East of England
• Additional projects looking at cancer and other specialities where Cambridge is strong.

Cambridge partners in the initiative pledge that specific projects will be refined and developed over the next few months ahead of a final decision being taken by the Government regarding funding and support.

Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, executive director of Cambridge University Health Partners, said: “Cambridge is the capital of UK life science with over 400 companies now employing in excess of 13,000 people.

“This is a fantastic base from which to work that has been acknowledged by the Government today. Simply put, we have the machinery to drive growth not just in the city but across the East of England.

“The proximity, talent and backgrounds of the key organisations in Cambridge allow for new technology, innovation and ‘data lakes’ to be harnessed effectively. Nowhere in the UK and rarely across the world do you find this unique set of conditions. 

“By putting forward projects to develop a MedTech hub, ‘datalakes’ and assist with the early detection of cancer, we can move to rapidly develop this sector, improving skills and creating employment in Cambridgeshire and throughout the region.”

Dr Jane Osbourn, vice-president at MedImmune – AstraZeneca’s global biologics R & D arm – added: “AstraZeneca shares the Government’s objective of ensuring the UK remains a great place for science and innovation post-Brexit.

“AstraZeneca is the UK’s leading pure play pharmaceutical company with strategic investment in the UK, Europe and globally. We are pleased to have played a leadership role in the development of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy. 

“Our global corporate headquarters are located at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and we are investing over £500 million in a strategic Research & Development hub here.

“This reflects the importance we attribute to the science ecosystem, skills base, and academic excellence of the world-leading sector cluster in Cambridge, within the UK’s ‘golden triangle’ for life sciences.

“We welcome the importance attributed to infrastructure in the strategy which is critical for the 15,000 employees, academics, patients and visitors coming to the CBC every day.”

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Malcolm Lowe-Lauri