Biotech tycoon warns life sciences growth stymied by weak funding

BIOTECH entrepreneur Christopher Evans has claimed that Scottish Enterprise's hopes of growing one of the key industries it has identified for support will be hampered by a weak investment climate in the UK.

He described it as "voice in the wilderness" as UK life science firms consistently fail to attract sufficient funding.

Evans, who founded BioVex, a cancer vaccine firm sold last week in a $1 billion deal to US-based firm Amgen, said: "BioVex were never going to raise the millions they needed in the UK. They were better off in the States where they raised 60m," he said. "We don't put enough money into these firms in the long term. There is too much pressure that they will pull off sensational results quickly."

UK investors, he said, were too risk averse to invest in biotech firms after being devastated by the banking crisis. He said this left Scotland in particular hard hit, leaving Scottish Enterprise and various public sector bodies to invest only small amounts in companies and projects such as the 600m Bioquarter campus.

"Scotland once had a lot of money, a lot of institutions and banks - but all the banks have gone pear-shaped. As a result Scottish Enterprise is a voice in the wilderness trying to prop these things up."

Rhona Allison, senior director of life sciences at Scottish Enterprise, admitted there was a funding gap for biotech firms in the 3m to 15m range.

Allison said that top fund manager Bill Blair was working with the Scottish Life Sciences Advisory Board to help the industry combat the lack of funding.

She said: "Attracting institutional venture capital funding from abroad is an important part of the mix for funding Scottish companies. But we need to make sure that those firms remain rooted in Scotland and aren't forced to move abroad to be near investors."

Her comments came ahead of Thursday's Scottish Enterprise life sciences dinner, one of the highlights of the biotech year. Figures to be released on Thursday will show that Scottish Enterprise invested 3m last year in research and development programmes being run by life science firms, which in turn leveraged 9m of funding from the companies themselves. Scotland's life science outfits attracted 36m of private equity funding last year, while Scottish Enterprise invested 7.6m, it said.