OUR CONTEXT
WHY LIFE SCIENCES MATTER
As described in the UK government’s Life Sciences Vision (2021) the human life sciences sector is among the most valuable and strategically important in the UK economy, and critical to the country’s health, wealth, and resilience.
The UK is one of the ‘big 5’ life sciences superpowers, along with the US, China, Japan and Germany. The UK is home to four of the ten best universities in the world for healthcare, including Imperial College London. British life sciences firms raised £4.5bn in 2021, up from just £261m in 2012..
In recent decades, advances in life sciences have fundamentally improved the length and quality of life in the UK and globally, and we stand on the cusp of an era of cures, in which new technologies make previously terminal disease treatable or curable. UK life sciences have played a significant role in the global fight against Covid-19.
Paddington Life Sciences will build on specific government life sciences health missions through:
- focusing on new approaches to rapid diagnostics for infectious diseases in adults and children
- building on our track record on vaccine studies/treatments (strengthened during Covid), in particular the role of human challenge studies in driving vaccine developments
- focusing on reducing the infectious exacerbations of respiratory disease, and also RSV/Bronchiolitis work in children
- contributions to research into neurodegeneration/dementia, the biology of ageing and mental health by offering access to high-volume, real-time data linked to the Trust’s longitudinal electronic care records of a highly diverse patient population.