As we endure the current lockdown some thoughts turn to the end of the year when this crisis, or at least this wave of the crisis, will be over. It’s always interesting, to me at least, what will be the words of the year?
Leaving aside the more obvious coronavirus and covid-19 - who would have thought we would all become so expert on the nomenclature of viruses (SARS-CoV – 2) - and the diseases (coronavirus) they cause? No doubt words such as ‘social distancing’ will be fairly near the top too.
Let me suggest a couple of outside runners for words of the year. Firstly, ‘resilience’ - as in how come the economy, health service, food supply and numerous other things we’ve taken for granted have fallen over so dramatically? And what will we need to put in place to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t challenge basic needs such as shopping for food, getting to work as well as the capacity of our health and social care services? Our digital infrastructure has had a severe test and has generally come through but we’ll want to make sure this is even more robust as working from home has become the norm, at least for now.
No doubt there will be a re-think about ‘just in time’ management and the way many (but not all) advanced economies have ‘offshored’ much of their manufacturing capacity to parts of the world which are less costly.
But there’s another word, which at first didn’t seem obvious, at least outside of the science community, ‘collaboration’. At our recent board meeting, our colleague Mark Gray from Middlesex University raised this as one of the big positives from this crisis so far – the need for institutions to work together across boundaries and across sectors.
There are many high profile collaborations across the country which have been at the front line of the world’s approach to dealing with the virus. But at the centre of much activity are the universities, businesses and research institutions in this the UK Innovation Corridor. With acknowledgment and thanks to Tony Jones at One Nucleus who produced this list, here is a snapshot of some important collaborations from within the Corridor:
- Cambridge University uses spin-out company’s innovation to co-ordinate donations of equipment in fight against COVID-19
- Avacta and @Cytiva (formerly GE Healthcare Life Sciences) collaborating on COVID-19 Rapid Test.Avacta CEO Alastair Smith provides update on COVID-19 collaboration with @CytivaAvacta CEO Alastair Smith provides update on COVID-19 collaboration with @CytivaAvacta CEO Alastair Smith provides update on COVID-19 collaboration with @Cytiva
- Testing for COVID-19 coronavirus at the Francis Crick Institute
- The designs of a new breathing aid developed by engineers at UCL and Formula One working with clinicians at UCLH have been made freely available to support the global response to Covid-19
- Cambridge Clinical Labs join with COVID-19 Volunteer Testing Network
- AstraZeneca/GSK/University of Cambridge collaborate to support UK national effort to boost COVID-19 testing
- Quadram Institute joins UK launch of whole genome sequence to map spread of Coronavirus
- Launch of the Testing Methods Online Innovation Community
- Wellcome Trust seeks £8Bn to fight ‘inevitable’ virus resurgence
- AstraZeneca tracks coronavirus antibody remedy in historic global alliance
- 150 scientists from new institute join Cambridge COVID-19 effort
- Norwich Research Park Scientists Join Hospital in the Fight Against COVID-19
- tranScrip is providing support as Synairgen confirms commencement of dosing in a trial of SNG001 in COVID-19
- Scientists on Standby portal launched to support the recruitment of overflow resource for the testing of COVID-19
That the UK has such an important cluster in life sciences in this Corridor has never been more important to the country and possibly to the world too. The UK Innovation Corridor as a collaboration of local government, businesses, universities, colleges and LEPs to provide the steady supply of growth space, labour and skills to facilitate economic growth will continue to matter as we come through this crisis. We shouldn’t forget that either.
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By John McGill, Investment and Development Correspondent
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