Is London ready to become the next biotech hub?
{credit}Hannah Lucy Jones{/credit}
In this month’s Windback Wednesday series, we’re all about entrepreneurship: what it takes to be one, how to become one and more. But if you’re based in London, it’s not so easy. Although it’s got the brains and research centres to make it a hub, setting up shop in London is the tricky part. In this podcast, I speak to Kit Malthouse, the Deputy Mayor of London for Business and Enterprise, and find out how London is preparing to become the next biotech hub.
Kit Malthouse, the Deputy Mayor of London for Business and Enterprise has big plans for London. In his speech at SynBioBeta event at Imperial College London, he spoke of his dreams of London becoming the next big hub for biotech start-ups. He is aware that the foundations for this already exist.
“To a certain extent we already are. We have a huge life sciences sector.” Five large research institutes, many hospitals, Institute for Cancer Research the Crick Institute (soon!) and many more are part of an ecosystem that already exists in London. But what the Deputy Mayor hopes to do is “give it some coherence, so that it comes together as an entity… promote it, and fundamentally attract investment in.”