What’s ahead for UK biotechs in the wake of Brex­it? It's not a pret­ty pic­ture

Seem­ing­ly al­most overnight the sen­ti­ment in the UK over Brex­it changed from Re­main to Leave. That sud­den switch-up leaves the UK’s bio­phar­ma in­dus­try fac­ing a lengthy pe­ri­od of fi­nan­cial and reg­u­la­to­ry un­cer­tain­ty. And biotech, where every­thing is un­cer­tain, hates un­cer­tain­ty.

Of­fi­cial­ly, the biotech in­dus­try quick­ly adopt­ed a clas­sic British at­ti­tude to a cri­sis: Keep calm and car­ry on.

“The life sci­ences sec­tor is a re­silient com­mu­ni­ty, un­fazed by new chal­lenges and staffed by great man­age­ment teams used to work­ing in a glob­al en­vi­ron­ment,” not­ed the UK BioIn­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion, with con­sid­er­able phlegm. “The fun­da­men­tals of UK bio­science re­main strong. In terms of po­ten­tial new ther­a­pies in the pipeline, the UK is by far the strongest in Eu­rope. But sev­er­al key is­sues for our sec­tor are now in flux.”

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