Scotland needs to look north to build the future economy

Last week, think tank Our Scottish Future published a report – “Innovation Nation: Good Jobs for Scotland’s Future”. It was positioned as a Scottish industrial strategy, anchored by innovation-led growth and identified life sciences as sectoral strength for Scotland. Although the health campus in Aberdeen was briefly mentioned in a paragraph about the importance of integration, the report recommends focusing on Dundee as a life science and technology “strategic cluster” with Aberdeen proposed to host energy.

Deborah O’Neil OBE FRSE, Founder and CEO of NovaBiotics and NovaBiotics Consumer Health and chair of the ONE Life Sciences and BioAberdeen boards responded:

I wanted to offer a perspective from here in Aberdeen — a city known, as you noted, for energy transition, but also home to a hub of innovation in life sciences.

While Aberdeen’s energy heritage is significant, our region is undergoing a remarkable economic transformation. At Opportunity North East (ONE) we work directly with businesses that are innovating in life sciences, digital tech, food drink and agriculture and we see firsthand the strength and ambition of our regional cluster.

We’re supporting early-stage and scaling companies in a thriving ecosystem — anchored by ONE BioHub, a £40 million investment in life sciences infrastructure. It provides start-ups, spin-outs and scale-ups with bespoke infrastructure to research, develop and commercialise world-leading science as solutions for global health and wellness needs. ONE BioHub is based within the Foresterhill Health Campus, one of Europe’s largest, where close ties between academic research, clinical practice and commercialisation create a rich environment for innovation and talent development.

The north east has globally recognised research strengths in cardiovascular, metabolic and infectious disease, oncology, neurodegeneration and biomedical imaging. Combining this world class research with the north east’s entrepreneurial mind-set and approach, and you have something truly unique for life science.

Beyond the laboratory and commercialisation space provided within ONE BioHub, ONE provides programme support to bioentrepreneurs and connects founders and companies to a network of mentors and industry expert advisors throughout the commercialisation journey of our regions’ life science innovation.

A great example is TauRx, based here in Aberdeen, which is developing treatments and diagnostics for Alzheimer’s and related neurodegenerative diseases. They have taken their first candidate therapy for Alzheimer’s from invention to phase 3 clinical trials and a submission for regulatory approval to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) under the accelerated access to new medicines pathway — a significant milestone.