No min­is­ter: UK biotech com­mu­ni­ty los­es its ded­i­cat­ed gov­ern­ment min­is­ter

George Free­man de­light­ed in telling peo­ple he was the world’s “first and on­ly” min­is­ter for the life sci­ences. The ques­tion now is whether he will al­so be the last.

In the big gov­ern­ment reshuf­fle fol­low­ing David Cameron’s de­par­ture in the wake of the stun­ning vote in fa­vor of leav­ing the EU, Free­man now has a new task as chair of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pol­i­cy Board.

Free­man was a biotech en­tre­pre­neur him­self in the day, once run­ning a com­pa­ny called Amedis and back­ing biotechs as the di­rec­tor of ear­ly-stage ven­tures at Mer­lin. That back­ground pro­vid­ed an en­thu­si­as­tic wel­come from the coun­try’s biotech com­mu­ni­ty, which en­joyed the at­ten­tion the min­is­ter brought to the field. And his new post has trig­gered more than a few laments on Twit­ter.

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