ABOUT
During his speech at the 2004 Biotech Forum in Copenhagen Lord Sainsbury announced that there would be a Collaborative programme established between the UK Bioscience Community and Medicon Valley Academy, the network for the academic and industry players based in Medicon Valley. Following discussions with MVA it was identified that companies are keen to partner with the UK and, in particular, start to access the R&D base within the UK. The key areas of particular synergy are Regenerative Medicine, Oncology, Diabetes and Neuroscience.
In July 2006 the Project was awarded funding from the UKTI R&D Programme to establish a series of Workshops between academic and clinical groups and Companies within the UK and their Counterparts in the Medicon Valley. The programme will also include small travel grants for additional meetings between interested parties and industry sponsored post docs spanning the two communities. To mark the official launch, UK Trade & Investment held a Dinner in the City of London on 23 January 2007, attended by the new Science Minister, Malcolm Wicks.
Medicon Valley is one of Europe's strongest life science clusters. It spans the Greater Copenhagen area in Denmark and the Skane region of southern Sweden and has been a significant success story in Inward Investment terms. Major Companies such as Lundbeck , Novo Nordisk and Astra Zeneca have a major presence there as well as incomers such as US Company Biogen Idec who are investing.
The aim of the UK-Medicon Valley Bioscience Alliance is to encourage new partnerships which may not otherwise have come about. Therefore, the Alliance concentrates on running, supporting and facilitating cross-over initiatives that stimulate new and innovative research and industry co-operations, knowledge sharing consortiums and investments into exciting young companies in the UK and Medicon Valley.
Targets for the Alliance
Start a Post Doc programme in each of the following therapeutic areas: diabetes, oncology, CNS and inflammatory diseases. The first Post Doc programme, comprising of 4 Post Doc students should be up and running by 2008 and the remaining 3 programmes, each with 4 Post Doc students, should be in place by 1 July 2009.
Together with involved parties we aim to open the door for research collaborations worth over Eur13 million of external funding from The Seventh EU Framework and similar programmes. The result will be measured over a three-year period of the UK-Medicon Valley Alliance up to 2009.
Sponsorship & funding opportunities
There are a variety of exciting opportunities for your company or organisation to support the key activities of the Alliance. This could be either through sponsorship or via co-funding one or more PostDoc scientists. Please contact our project managers to discuss in more detail in which way you would like to take part in the UK-Medicon Valley Bioscience Alliance.
Stig Jorgensen, CEO of Medicon Valley Alliance, and the Hon Malcolm Wicks, UK Minister for Science, at the inaugural meeting of the UK-MV Bioscience Alliance
The UK-Medicon Valley Bioscience Alliance is managed by Medicon Valley Alliance and, on behalf of UK Trade & Investment, by BioPartner.co.uk.
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The Magdalen Centre
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