Business rush 'risk to research funding'

Published on Sunday 11 February 2007 00:18

SCOTLAND'S rush to commercialise medical research is putting the industry's long-term interests at risk, a senior academic has warned.

Vicki Stone, life sciences professor at Napier University, claimed that the funding balance "is very much tipping towards the commercialisation rather than the basic research".

Stone's warning came as hundreds of academics and entrepreneurs gathered last week for the annual Thistle Bioscience Forum and Scottish Enterprise's life sciences annual dinner. SE last year named the sector as one of its six priority industries.

SE chairman Sir John Ward last week signalled that more stress would be put on commercial activity. He said: "We have it all here. It is how we bring it all together ... and we must increase the amount of entrepreneurial activity in Scotland to meet our targets."

But Stone suggested that initiatives like the Proof of Concept fund and the Co-Investment Fund, while useful in the short term, could divert resources from fundamental research into disease.

She said: "It is imperative that the basic research is properly funded, allowing people to work out fundamental mechanisms, how biological systems work and what drives disease."

Stone is responsible for toxicology research at Edinburgh's Napier University, where she is also co-director of the life sciences department's biomedicine group.

She warned that Scotland could lose its unique advantages as a base for life sciences, an industry which now employs 27,000 scientists, researchers and administrators, if investment was not made in its science base.

Recent statistics show that the rate of new company formation in the life sciences sector is slowing down, and that early-stage companies face greater competition for funding.