The world is changing at a rate faster than we’ve ever seen before.
A large proportion of that change can be attributed to life sciences research covering all work on living organisms but is largely comprised of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
On a global scale, increased competition, heightened regulatory standards and tightening purse strings are prominent drivers for innovation. More locally, research is being directed by the needs of our society; ageing populations, the need for personalised medicine, the shift from treatment to prevention and the search for sustainability are all high up on consumer wish lists.
It is against the backdrop of these compelling pressures and challenges that we need to evaluate the trends unfolding in the health and life sciences arena:
The world is changing at a rate faster than we’ve ever seen before.
A large proportion of that change can be attributed to research in Life Sciences, which covers all work on living organisms, but is made up largely of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The UK has one of the strongest Life Sciences industries in the world, boasting a £20.7 billion turnover in 2015 and providing 90,000 jobs in 20161. The growth of the UK health sector is also evident, for example shares in the pharmaceutical industry rose from 7.7% of GDP in 2008 to 9.7% by 20162.
The rising arc of expenditure demonstrates the progress of society, striving to ensure the welfare of its citizens and exploiting new treatments and technologies to do so. It also ensures our continued place in the global market, as pharmaceutical and biotech exports form a significant proportion of UK trade.
A large proportion of that change can be attributed to research in Life Sciences, which covers all work on living organisms, but within the UK this is made up largely of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
However, as of early 2020 the landscape dramatically changed for us all following the emergence of Covid-19. Throughout the year from this point there were vast changes in the strategy and aims of the sector, due to redirected focus on novel therapeutics, treatments and vaccines for the global pandemic. Despite this new priority, the societal cost of healthcare is rising as people live longer and the prevalence of long-term, complex diseases increase.
Many new novel therapeutics, testing capabilities and advancements adjacent and outside of Covid-19 have been conducted. Within this article, the focus is on the trends outside of Covid-19.
On a global scale, increased competition, heightened regulatory standards and tightening purse-strings are prominent drivers for innovation. More locally, research is being directed by the needs of our society; ageing populations, the need for personalised medicine, the shift from treatment to prevention and the search for sustainability are all high up on consumer wish-lists.
Research and development in the related fields of health, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology will determine the future quality of life of individuals and societies in so many ways, even from the angle of climate change where biotechnology has a potentially decisive role to play in promoting sustainability.
It is against the backdrop of these compelling pressures and challenges that we need to evaluate the trends unfolding in the health and life sciences arena.
New pharma approaches
Digitalisation of therapeutics
Healthy ageing & robotics
Nature & sustainability
New pharma approaches
Advances in technology are continuously providing new opportunities for the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare market and throughout the drug development and investment cycle.
Big data, bioinformatics and machine learning have helped speed up drug discovery, drive down research and development costs, lower failure rates in clinical trials and inform future investment decisions using performance data for approved drugs.
In the digital age, Big Pharma and the tech giants are natural allies. Many major drug manufacturers such as AstraZeneca, Bayer, Novartis and GSK are discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI) partnerships with the aim of finding and validating new drug targets, improving clinical trial planning and operations, as well as pharmacovigilance (monitoring of adverse events), disease prediction and drug repurposing.
For example, Biogen along with Accenture and Q1Bit developed a first of its kind molecule comparison tool for pharmaceutical companies to tackle neurodegenerative conditions3. Novartis and Microsoft announced in September 2019 an alliance that will “leverage data and AI to transform how medicines are discovered, developed and commercialised”. Novartis also established an Innovation
Among the continually developing trends in medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, cell and gene therapy, pharmacogenetics and bioinformatics for drug re- purposing merit special mention.
An area increasing in prevalence is cell therapy which involves the transplantation of stem cells to repair damaged tissue and holds a great deal of potential for treating many diseases. Types of stem cells that may be used include hematopoietic, skeletal muscle, mesenchymal, lymphatic, dendritic or pancreatic. There are some types of cell therapy such as CAR T-cell therapy are really taking hold and are even available in the NHS5. CAR T-cell treatment is a type of immunotherapy tailored to each patient to reprogram their immune system cells and has seen success in patients with advance stage cancers.
In order to propel cell therapy into the mainstream, setting up a reliable way of producing and transporting notoriously fragile cells needs to be overcome. There are several companies tackling this problem including UK based Cytera Cellworks which has developed a method of
The international Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced the human genome two years ahead of schedule in 2003, was the catalyst for revolutionising science. In the two decades since our genome was completed, other model organisms including plants and microbes have been sequenced allowing exponential developments in fields such as microbiology, virology and most notably, medicine6.
DNA and the cells in which it resides are fundamental to all life. As such, when a mutation occurs that threatens our cellular function, there can be serious consequences.
It is now possible to edit genetic sequences using what has been dubbed one of the most important scientific discoveries of last decade, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology. The revolutionary gene editing tool has opened the door to innovation across diverse areas of medicine including curing genetic deafness, improving treatment for cardiovascular disease7, sickle-cell anaemia8, cancer diagnostics and therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases9. Although much of the current CRISPR research is happening in the US, the UK is catching up with companies such as Horizon licensing the tool to develop therapies for genetic diseases10.
Gene editing is re-writing the life story of people with severe genetic diseases coded in their DNA. The potential of this therapy to fix mutations that cause serious genetic diseases, rare conditions and cancer will be transformative for healthcare in the 21st century.
In addition to gene editing, pharmacogenetics is the study of how an individual’s genetic make-up may affect the way they respond to drug treatments. Research in this area can determine how single genetic alterations may affect the metabolism of a drug, but also genetic differences in drug transports and receptors can be detected which can influence the intensity of the drug at its intended target.
Analysis of protein structure can be significantly sped up using bioinformatics. Bioinformatics as a field has strengthened enormously in recent years and is expected only to grow and further cement itself as an invaluable tool in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.
Bioinformatics combines molecular biology with computers and statistics. It is being heavily utilised in microarray research and is revolutionising molecular biology and drug discovery by speeding up the rate that large data sets can be analysed. This is particularly useful for drug discovery where bioinformatics can be deployed to search for novel drug targets and also targets in existing drugs, resulting in a drastic reduction in the time and money needed to develop new therapies.
There are many examples of drug repurposing discoveries including Thalidomide as a treatment for leprosy and more recently multiple myeloma, estimated to cost $40-
80 million, compared with $1-2 billion if it had been developed from scratch11. While cost comparisons don’t factor in failed efforts to re-purpose other molecules, this is still a significantly lower-risk approach.
Pharmaceutical companies have huge portfolios of drug compounds that failed at various stages of development. Researchers are turning their attention to these and existing drugs as a potential goldmine of therapies that are cheaper and faster to move into the clinic.
These advances in diagnostics, gene therapy and AI-fueled repurposing can accelerate the delivery of more effective and personalised treatments while boosting the productivity of the pharmaceutical sector. As technology improves at an exponential rate, our ability to combat ever more challenging diseases and industry issues becomes a more tangible and exciting reality.
Digitalisation of therapeutics
Digitalisation is permeating the entire healthcare ecosystem, from diagnosis to treatment, drug research to medical insurance and managing chronic conditions. The applications are many and multiplying, continuing to transform how healthcare is defined. The aim is to harness digital solutions to deliver better outcomes for patients, whilst compensating for the decline in capacity in health systems. This includes innovations within emerging areas such as Femtech and digital therapeutics as opportunities in both medical-grade and mass-market solutions offer of new ways to manage our health.
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques have further accelerated development across multiple sectors. Pharmaceutical companies and the tech giants have become natural bedfellows. More than 30 major drug manufacturers are reported to be discussing AI partnerships including Biogen and Q1Bit. Additionally, through the analysis of the vast amounts of data already available, AI can yield valuable insights into the efficacy of medicines, nutrition, exercise and other interventions that promote healthier lifestyles via digital therapeutics.
Babylon, for instance, uses machine learning algorithms as well as humans’ medical expertise to improve understanding of how patients describe their symptoms and match these to all possible diagnoses.
BenevolentAI has sought to transform the way medicines are discovered, developed, tested and brought to market. Its platform uses AI to help its scientists find new ways to treat disease and personalise medicines to patients through the identification of drug targets that control the mechanism of diseases.
Radiology and histopathology stand to be revolutionised by digitalisation in a similar manner as drug development. Within these areas there is a wealth of imaging data that goes unexploited and through AI capabilities it is now possible to detect and count cells that may be potentially cancerous, increasing the chances for early detection. Adaptix Imaging has patented a 3D X-ray technology that uses a portable flat panel, designed to make radiology for mammograms cheaper, low-dose and more widely available.
New, cheaper and more readily available tests are being developed for diagnosing conditions including cancers, using the technology that is already available to us12. Sniffphone and SkinVision have developed cancer screening capabilities from our smartphones to detect 95% sensitivity for skin and gastric cancer.
Closing this gender gap in medical knowledge is a compelling priority for the 2020s to help address unmet needs and gaps in knowledge of women’s health. This has led to further interest in Femtech – healthcare innovations designed for women’s health, with a surge in 2019 of Femtech startups and technology products, apps and hardware addressing women’s health.
Companies like Ava, and Natural Cycles have focussed on fertility tracking, development of bespoke wearable tech and software to analyse physical changes to deduce an individual’s fertility window. NextGen Jane is an example of the disruptive potential of Femtech that sees a woman’s monthly cycle as a natural biopsy; analysing cells that were shed during menstruation and measuring genomic classifiers for specific diseases to enable earlier diagnosis of devastating reproductive disorders that previously took up to a decade to identify.
New treatments for menopause have also become more available in recent years. ProFam and KaNDy Therapeutics have researched and developed surgical and cryogenic procedures that offer alternatives to extend a woman’s reproductive age and to improve hormone therapy treatments to help alleviate related issues.
Digital health also permeates into our more day-to- day lives as well. Many digital applications have been developed over the recent years with focus on health monitoring, data gathering and analysis. The impact of digital health on patient care is accelerating with the increasing adoption of mobile health (mHealth) apps and wearable sensors. The number of mHealth applications available has been estimated to be over 350,000 according to market researchers and it is expected that investment within this field will continue to increase.13
Babylon, the interactive health service application now delivers 4,000 clinical consultations a day and serves more than 4.3 million members worldwide in both developed and emerging markets, using deep learning techniques to analyse symptoms. Since 2017, Babylon has agreed contracts with partners including Prudential, Samsung, Telus, Bupa and the NHS.
Companies like SiHealth have focused their efforts on the digital focus for personalised skin care. The HappySun app developed by SiHealth uses satellite technology to measure personal sun exposure, accurately measure different types of solar radiation. Its aim to estimate photobiological effects and provide personalised wellbeing recommendations based on solar radiation, skin type and health risk factors.
Further developments in wearable technology have continued to revolutionise everyday health diagnostics and maintenance of ongoing health issues. Examples of this within the market include Withings’ Move ECG; a watch with a built-in electrocardiogram (to detect atrial fibrillation in relation to strokes and heart attacks)14, and new-generation glucometers that are able to continuously monitor glucose levels whilst simultaneously providing analytics and real time information via your smartphone. Such developments have been taken further from collaborations with companies like Google, which has collaborated with both Dexcom and Novartis on revolutionary wearable glucometers. This ranges from a bandage-sized wearable sensor transmitting real-time information to the Cloud, to contact lenses that could monitor glucose levels in tears.15
The convergence of technologies, speed at which clinical innovations emerge, and inter-connectivity of wearable devices will test evolving regulatory frameworks and risk management as healthcare continues to move forward into digital health, continuing to spin off applications in diagnostics and health monitoring that seemed far-fetched even a few years ago.
Healthy ageing and robotics
The good news is we’re living longer. But that’s not so good if it means potentially living longer with debilitating illness and a lower quality of life. It’s bad news for the economy too, when the workforce has to support a growing cohort of people heavily dependent on health and social services. This has led to increases in state pension ages and growing concerns about the sustainability of healthcare funding.
Prevention is cheaper than cure or care, so it pays to help people stay active, fitter, healthier and self-sufficient for longer. Apart from reducing the scale of human suffering, the strain on health services and public funds can be eased.
Increasingly, the older internet using generation, more commonly known as ‘silver surfers’ are buying into the benefits of the wellbeing movement too. The ‘grey pound’ is an attractive and growing market for technology companies and the pharmaceutical industry as the grey economy continues to grow dramatically.
Policymakers recognise the challenges and opportunities. The UK government has prioritised both longevity and artificial intelligence in its 4 Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges. It’s reported that 260 UK companies, a similar number of investors, plus 10 research labs and 10 non-profits are “using technology to hunt for the holy grail to extend life and health”.16 In March 2018 the UK government announced a £300 million challenge fund to promote leadership in healthy ageing.
We foresee a rising tide of start-ups and new business models in health and care for growing needs of the ageing population, not just for everyday activities but in all therapeutics. This intersection of technology and the ‘longevity economy’ was coined Agetech or Gerontech. The term currently covers a blend of smart home gadgetry, monitoring devices and software to aid cognition and communication.17
Many of the recent wave of inventions are adoptable or adaptable for the older consumer. Gadgets such as voice assistants are being marketed to older consumers and their children. So Alexa becomes more like a companion, providing news and weather updates and playing ‘golden oldies’ on request.
Where will this tech take us? Imagine the smarter and more caring progeny of Alexa and Siri doing more than fielding requests. A programmable avatar – fed with personal and family history, photos and oral testimony, as well as up-to-date details curated by AI would be able to engage, as well as monitor health and vital signs.
Wearable tech and fitness trackers can revolutionise the fall alarm worn by elderly people living alone. Using the connectivity of the Internet of Things, these wristbands could relay vital signals such as body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure – and so pre-empt falls, rather than just trigger an emergency response.
Leveraging a mix of on-site and remote monitoring, Agetech will also provide mixed models that combine human and machine interaction.
Japan’s SoftBank Robotics has grown a range of humanoid like robots. Among those created, Pepper and sixth-generation NAO robot have roles in healthcare ranging from monitoring to educating patients using their capabilities in cognitive computing, interactivity, languages and data collection. Their sibling, Romeo has become a research project, funded by French investment bank BPI, focusing on assistance for older people and those with reduced autonomy. Others are working on robotics to specialise in care for older people.
Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation is the creator of the Care-O-bot.18 Third-generation Care-O-bots are supporting the elderly at home and in nursing homes, as well as being involved in various research projects. Various functions for supporting people around the home and with assistive functions for patients have been used Care-O-bots as application platforms.
Catering to the wellbeing of an ageing population means paying attention to nutrition as well as medicine and care. Specialist food producer Apetito serves hospitals, care homes and meals-on-wheels. Its menu includes small but nutritious Mini Meals Extra designed to combat malnutrition in people with reduced appetites, including those living with dementia. Its texture-modified meals comprise nutritionally balanced foods blended to a consistent texture and re-shaped after cooking to look appetising for customers with dysphagia who find it hard to swallow.
Care service providers are refining and updating their offer for a growing market. Abingdon-based Canary Care has designed a wireless sensor-based smart home monitoring system that is not dependent on landline or broadband.
Combining this social aspect with cognitive health, Memrica’s Prompt is a memory engine that builds personalised mini- profiles of the people and places that matter from the content each user saves. Dictating this information and asking questions helps stave off memory loss and encourages people to engage in community and social activities.
These tech-enabled helpers will become more sophisticated and commonplace. Today the sector is where Fintech was in 2007, according to an early venture capitalist in the field.19 Just ten years later, its venture capital investment surpassed $27 billion. Agetech will be worth $2.7 trillion by 2025, based on projections that digital products will have a 10% share of the growing global grey economy.
Nature and sustainability
A movement is being made within life science research to help us all step away from fossil fuels and petrochemical plastics and return to nature. Science has frequently taken inspiration from nature and natural resources, from which great advancements within sustainability have been achieved. Within our economic landscape, we are seeking to create new ground that is ‘green’ (low- carbon and environmentally friendly), ‘blue’ (tapping the oceans’ resources while preventing pollution) and ‘circular’ (using resources efficiently without waste.) Features like advanced biorefineries will become more commonplace over the next decade – maximising resource use and exploiting ‘waste’ raw materials to create high-value products in a potentially world-saving virtuous cycle.
The developments under way are varied – with focus to reduce dependency on fossil resources with bioenergy; promoting sustainable production of renewable food and feed from land, fisheries and aquaculture; and creating new bio-based products, jobs and industries.
Turning first to energy, biofuels are playing a growing role alongside renewables, particularly in transport, though replacing entrenched reliance on subsidised fossil fuels is a gargantuan challenge. Examples of the types of biofuels available include ethanol (derived from sugar), biodiesel (from fats), green diesel (from plants and algae) and biogas (methane derived from organic material). Biofuel usage is continuing to have influence on policies for road transport, marine shipping and aviation, as well as into arable land policies for crop-based fuels. Turning waste into biodiesel is a circular economic solution which companies like Argent Energy and Green Energy have been seeking to establish. Argent Energy and Green Energy collect tallow which is used in cooking oils, waste fats and even sewer fatbergs to be converted into clean, renewable biodiesel.
According to the European Biorefinery Joint Strategic Vision 203020, a significant proportion of the overall European demand for food, chemicals, energy, materials and fibres could be fulfilled using biomass as a feedstock for biorefining technologies. The UK has a £1 billion bioethanol industry, but it stands to lose investment unless the ethanol fuel blend is doubled (a minimum of 5% to 10% ethanol within an unleaded diesel) to further reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Aside from advanced biofuel developments being sought to meet 25% of Europe’s transport energy needs (including bio-based jet fuels); the Vision 2030 forecasts a growing market for bio-based fibre, polymers and bioplastics; and a new generation of materials and composites for lightweight components in industries such as automotive and construction. Bioplastics are already being used in plastic food packaging, personal care packaging and plastic products such as pens and mobile phone cases. Biome Bioplastics utilises industrial biotechnology developments to create bioplastics to replace oil-based polymers with biobased and biodegradable aromatic polyesters. Companies like Exilva are looking to replace surfactants and other petrochemical products that are used throughout many industries. Exilva is the world’s first commercially available microfibrillated cellulose, which is an additive that can be used to improve the stability, drying time or durability of various substances from adhesives, paints, coatings on products and cosmetics, to grout and concrete.
Replacement and alternatives of petrochemical plastics have led to us looking further into our marine environments to bring about a sea of change within sustainability. Scotland’s CuanTec styles itself a blue biotech company using green chemistry to replace petrochemical plastics with chitin, a natural forming substance biologically extracted from aquaculture waste (predominately shells of North Atlantic langoustines) at an industrial scale. This natural polymer has demonstrated anti-microbial properties, causing it to be in demand for more than 3,000 industrial uses, including compostable packaging that combats food-spoiling bacteria.
Only 5% of the marine environment has been described, and 0.5-5 million species, mostly micro-organisms, still remain to be discovered. Microalgae is a natural raw material with huge potential with their rich biochemicals and properties which are of strategic value to many other sectors besides pharmacology – from biofuels to nutrition.
AlgaEnergy, Susewi and MiAlgae have been working on microalgae farming projects across the globe, for the production of high-value products such as pigments, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, vitamins and antioxidants. Their applications range from cosmetics and food, animal feed to pharmaceuticals without further impacting the environment i.e. producing clean water through the process or recycling by-products from other industries.
As many as three in four currently available pharmaceutical products have been derived from natural sources. These include examples such as aspirin, heparin, penicillin, and other consumer healthcare products, like antacids which are derived from the glycomolecules in seaweed.
There is a huge opportunity for new drug discovery exploring new antibiotics, anti-inflammatory and anti- cancer drugs within marine environments. AquaPharm is a biotechnology company that has been targeting high-yield bio-manufacture of vitamins, anti-oxidants and blocking agents, and industrial compounds (pigments, cosmetics and bio-catalysts) from microbial organisms from marine environments.
Florida-based Oceanyx has identified several promising compounds from single-cell cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae. One of the leading molecules from Oceanyx, called Largazole, has been indicated for treatment of cancer, bone and neurodegenerative diseases.21
Explorations of the marine environment are not limited to just the microbial world, with the discovery of new molecules for cancer, neurodegenerative diseases as well as anti-fungal, -viral and -bacterial compounds from organisms like tunicates (sea squirts), fish slime and sea sponges.
More famous examples of marine derived compounds used commercially include Trabectedin (tunicate derived), now produced synthetically as Yondelis for the treatment of soft tissue sarcoma and relapsed ovarian cancer22. One of the latest drugs to be approved by the FDA, in the USA, is derived partly from a mollusc. The compound, Polivy is an antibody drug designed to work differently from traditional chemotherapies by killing cancerous B cells while sparing healthy cells.23 More marine-derived drugs are in the clinical pipeline, 10 of which are FDA approved, as of January 2020 with approximately 30 more in clinical trials.24
Maximising resource use and exploiting ‘waste’ raw materials to create high-value products in a potentially world-saving virtuous cycle is looking to become more commonplace over the next decade as we aim reduce and eventually eliminate our dependency on petrochemical products and fossil fuels.
Final thoughts
The future of life science research is going to take us in new and exciting directions, building on
the technological advancements currently happening all around us. Due to concepts like Moore’s Law (computer processing speed doubling every 18 months) and the law of accelerating return, the pace at which technological progress can drive forward is exponential, and with it are the possibilities for research. Coupled with increasing cross-sector collaboration, the future is more unpredictable than it’s ever been.
As technologies like AI, robotics, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals continue to advance, so does our ability to create longer and healthier lives. From full physiological simulations to determine causes and effects of diseases as well as treatments, to fully humanoid robots to help with the care of our older or less able generations. With the vast microcosms of information that we continue to mine from, including the diverse marine ecosystems and the contrasting microscopic kingdom of bacteria, viruses and protozoa, items that once seemed only available in science fiction are slowly coming to life.
Innovation that can help drive the bottom line
The following are examples of client projects that Ayming’s life sciences team has identified as qualifying for R&D incentives:
Development of new applications for existing drugs or devices.
Establishing new manufacturing processes where technology is employed or new manufacturing techniques used.
Development or improvement of experimental assays/protocols and disease models.
Designing and developing certain hardware and software systems for use in research and clinical development.
Biological screening and pharmacological testing.
Development of new or improved pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals or medical devices.
Development of reagents, devises and equipment for the testing of drugs or patient samples.
Toxicology and safety testing.
Design of protocols for clinical trials phases I-III, potentially phase IV.
Development of new methods/formulations for drug delivery, or improvement of existing ones.
Naomi Ikeda
Manager, Innovation Incentives
Naomi manages the engagement processes for numerous R&D claims and is responsible for the management of the consultant teams that work on client’s R&D claims. She also leads Ayming’s Life Sciences team.
Before joining Ayming, Naomi started her R&D tax relief career at KPMG and spent for over 4 and a half years delivering R&D claims for numerous companies across multiple sectors, ranging from manufacturing & engineering to life sciences. Naomi has a PhD in molecular biology, studying bacterial cell shape change.
Maxine is an associate consultant in Ayming’s Innovation Incentives team and one of our Life Sciences subject matter experts, supporting clients’ claims across a number of sectors.
Before joining Ayming, Maxine spent 1.5 years in academic grant management at the London School of Economics where she gained a strong background in financial management. Maxine has a PhD in Life Sciences in the field of cell biology. studying the molecular biology of a tropical parasite.
