Fund boosts Wales biotech sector

A £100m plan to build the UK's first three proton beam therapy centres not only heralds a breakthrough in cancer care, but also marks another step forward in efforts to put Wales on the map for medical science.

The first proton beam centre, which offers a highly targeted form of radiotherapy for hard-to-reach tumours, will open in Cardiff next year. It is backed by a life science investment fund set up by the Welsh government.

Proton Partners International, which plans to follow its Cardiff facility with centres in London and the northeast by 2017, is the latest venture by Sir Chris Evans, one of Britain's most high-profile biotech entrepreneurs.

The Welsh microbiologist was among the pioneers of Britain's nascent biotech industry in the 1990s. Two decades later, he is trying to incubate a fresh wave of life science start-ups - this time concentrated in Wales.

"As a Welshman I wanted to give something back," says the 57-year-old Port Talbot native, whose Arthurian investment company teamed up with the Welsh government in 2013 to set up the £100m Wales Life Sciences Investment Fund.

Proton Partners, which will be based in Wales, has been pledged £10m by the fund. Other investments include ReNeuron, a stem cell therapy company that is building a manufacturing base near Cardiff and moving its headquarters from Surrey.

A glass-fronted "life science hub" was opened in the regenerated Cardiff Bay area last year. "We needed somewhere to bring investors," Sir Chris says. "I couldn't take them to the pub. So they built the hub and it looks more like California than Cardiff."

Wales is hardly alone in trying to lure life science investment and the high-skilled jobs that come with it. The UK industry is heavily bunched around the "golden triangle" between Oxford, Cambridge and London but Sir Chris says Wales can find niches where it is competitive. Cardiff University, for example, has strengths in neuroscience and cancer research.

Other parts of the UK are also attempting to combine academic strength with lower costs to compete with the southeast. Scotland is pushing various initiatives to promote its growing biotech cluster and the industry is among those targeted by chancellor George Osborne's "northern powerhouse" plan to regenerate the north of England.

However, the Welsh government has arguably gone further by committing £50m of public money to its biotech investment fund, with Sir Chris aiming to raise the same again from private investors.

He wants to put Wales at the heart of a broader resurgence in UK life sciences after a long financing drought. Scarred by past failures, the City of London has been reluctant to throw its weight behind the sector in the way that US investors have fuelled a boom in biotech stocks in New York during the past two years.

Sir Chris says there have been recent signs of UK investor appetite picking up, highlighting big fund-raisings by Circassia, an anti-allergy specialist, and Adaptimmune, a cancer drug developer, both based in Oxford.

But he says there is still a mismatch between Britain's world-class science and its relative scarcity of successful biotech companies. "We have some of the greatest universities and one of the greatest financial centres yet still we struggle to commercialise our science."

Greater risk appetite and a longer-term vision is needed, he says, citing the example of Piramed, a cancer drug company he invested in, which was sold to Swiss group Roche for $160m in 2008. "Everyone was delighted because they got a seven or eight times return but it could have turned into a multibillion-pound company if we'd been more ballsy and held out."

A flamboyant character with a thick Welsh accent, Sir Chris praises the "boldness and enterprise" of the Labour-led Welsh government for supporting life sciences. Yet he could find himself on a collision course with Ed Miliband should the Labour leader become UK prime minister after next month's general election.

Sir Chris says Proton Partners wants to make its cancer centres available to NHS patients but this might clash with Mr Miliband's proposal for a cap on profits for private providers to the health service.

A solution must be found, says Sir Chris, because using domestic clinics would be cheaper for the NHS than sending patients to the US for proton beam therapy as happens now. Any profits, meanwhile, would boost returns for investors - including the Labour-led Welsh government.

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