"Patrick Vallance, a former executive at drugmaker GSK, said the country needed to increase spending on medicines and reverse a decade of declining investment. We are determined to solve this, Lord Vallance told the Commons science committee. This is not something [where] we're sitting saying let's watch the decline of the industry. That's what's happened for the past 10 years. We must not do that. We have to act. Now is a pivotal moment to try to get this right."
"MPs called an emergency session in response to last week's decision by the US drugmaker Merck, known as MSD in Europe, to scrap its plans for a 1bn London research centre and lay off 125 scientists partly based at the capital's Francis Crick Institute. MSD blamed the challenges of the UK not making meaningful progress towards addressing the lack of investment in the life science industry."
The UK faces a standoff with the pharmaceutical industry after several major drugmakers cancelled UK projects worth nearly 2bn, prompting urgent government attention. Merck/MSD scrapped plans for a 1bn London research centre and cut 125 scientists, blaming insufficient progress on life science investment. AstraZeneca put a 200m Cambridge laboratory on hold and abandoned a 450m Speke vaccine site investment after negotiations and reduced government support. Science minister Patrick Vallance called for increased spending on medicines, noting NHS medicine spend has fallen as a share of healthcare since 2015 but will rise from the current 9%. He urged rapid uptake of new medicines and equitable access and referenced regulators MHRA and NICE.
#pharmaceutical-investment #nhs-medicines-spending #merckmsd-cancellations #astrazeneca-project-delays
Read at www.theguardian.com
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