The Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) has announced the launch of a new Life Sciences Commission, which will create a roadmap to achieve a world class environment and industry offer to attract life sciences to the city of Birmingham and wider region.
Chaired by Birmingham businessman Graham Silk, who is also co-founder of the Cure Leukaemia charity and Patients4Data, the commission will involve a wide range of stakeholders including hospitals and other related NHS partners, universities, industry, central government and the GBSLEP’s private and public sector partners.
Birmingham is fast becoming recognised as an important centre for the life sciences sector with its unique infrastructure for accelerated clinical trials including unrivalled access to a large, diverse and stable patient population, and its fast growing medical technologies cluster.
The new commission will be looking to unlock the major potential that exists to grow the life sciences sector in the Greater Birmingham region, which will be further enhanced by the opening of a new Institute of Translational Medicine (ITM) in Birmingham in June 2015.
Steve Hollis, deputy chairman of the GBSLEP, said: “The launch of the Life Sciences Commission is particularly exciting and will allow us to build on Birmingham’s current success in pioneering life sciences services in the UK. This vitally important work will accelerate the delivery of personalised healthcare for a range of major issues including cancer and liver disease.
“As well as positioning our city as a life sciences centre of excellence, helping to provide the best treatments for the improvement of the health of the nation, Birmingham’s life sciences focus will also go a long way to creating more jobs and delivering further growth for our region.”
Minister for Life Sciences, George Freeman, said: “Bringing together industry with the assets and capabilities of our universities and the NHS is not only revolutionising the way we look at getting better treatments and medical innovations into the health service, it boosts economic growth and creates jobs.
With its excellent universities, its infrastructure to accommodate accelerated clinical trials and its large and diverse patient population, Birmingham is in a strong position to become a hub for the life sciences, so I welcome this commission by the GBSLEP to look at how best to grow the life sciences sector in the city and the wider area.”
Graham Silk said: “The last decade has seen incredible strides forward in how new medicines and devices are treating patients, with a significant move towards personalised and stratified treatments, much of this driven by the life sciences industry. Given Birmingham’s pre-eminence in the area of accelerated trials, its forward thinking vision in creating the Institute of Translational Medicine and
with one of the largest one-hour catchment area of patients in Europe, this commission will identify and create a roadmap that will significantly assist in expanding and stimulating life sciences activity in the region. In addition, the creation of a sustainable throughput of new treatments will deliver a massive improvement to patient outcomes not only locally but across the world.
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Notes to editors
About the Institute of Transitional Medicine
The new Institute of Translational Medicine (ITM) is a world-class clinical research facility that will be located in the original Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston, next to the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and the University of Birmingham Medical School.
The ITM’s vision is to use pioneering science to accelerate the delivery of personalised healthcare. It aims to cure disease and save lives by applying transformative science and technology and by educating and training the healthcare workforce.
The ITM will engage widely with industry and play a pivotal role in supporting the expansion of life sciences research and education in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands region. It will locate, in a single facility, key clinical academic groups conducting internationally recognised research programmes in cancer, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, chronic diseases, acute diseases and trauma, transplantation, rare diseases, paediatric and paediatric/adult transition medicine.
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For further information regarding GBSLEP, please contact Katie Trout at GBSLEP – 0121 303 8107 or email Katie.trout@birmingham.gov.uk