OBN Facilitates Funding to UK R&D Companies from the Biomedical Catalyst Scheme 
8th of November, 2012
8 November 2012: Abingdon, UK – OBN, the trade association for emerging life sciences companies, is gratified to note the recent £39 million tranche in funding awards to UK life science companies under the Biomedical Catalyst Scheme administered by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB).
Since March 2012, OBN has held four events in Oxford, Cambridge and London where over 220 attendees from life science companies were able to meet, interact with and question the TSB staff responsible for the administration of the fund.
Senior managers from the 2012 Biomedical Catalyst Scheme winners Absynth, Glide Pharma, Arecor, Pharminox, Domainex, Summit, GeneFirst and Pharmidex all attended these OBN events.
At the second Oxford event in October this year, entitled ‘Learning from the Winners, How to Succeed with the Biomedical Catalyst Scheme’, OBN was the first organisation to call on the UK Government to extend and expand of the industry component of the Biomedical Catalyst to £2bn over 10 years, which will help maintain the UK bioindustry’s number one position in Europe.
Having presented at three of the OBN events, Dr Helen Kuhlman, Lead Technologist, Medicines and Healthcare, TSB commented, “OBN events have provided a great opportunity to reach out to exciting businesses and talk with the people responsible for developing innovative healthcare propositions about their challenges and aspirations.”
Dr Jon Rees, CEO, OBN commented, “OBN is delighted to work with the TSB in order to ensure that its members to have the best chance of funding success. Having identified an effective scheme to stimulate innovative R&D, we hope the UK Government will build on this commitment toward ensuring the scheme is of a scale and duration sufficient to maintain the UK bioindustry’s number one position in Europe.”
OBN’s early and comprehensive efforts on the BMC are part of our facilitation of funding for the early-stage UK life science sector that in the last year has also included presentations by partners from the Syncona Fund, Index Ventures and NeoMed to our members. In addition, OBN will host the second City Investment Network event at Baker Botts in the City of London later today, and the BMC will chair a showcase scientific session of the winners from the BMC Scheme at next year’s BioTrinity conference which will be held in Newbury from the 14th to the 16th of May, 2013.
URL: www.obn.org.uk