APPENDIX 4
Memorandum from Astra Zeneca
1. RESEARCH COUNCIL
SUPPORT FOR
KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
2. AstraZeneca is a global company engaged
in the discovery and development of new medicines for the treatment
of infections including tuberculosis, cancer, metabolic disorders,
cardiovascular disease, neuropsychological, gastrointestinal,
respiratory and inflammatory disorders. Our innovative products
bring benefit to patients throughout the world.
3. AstraZeneca is pleased to contribute
to this inquiry. As a successful major pharmaceutical company
AstraZeneca enjoys wide ranging interactions with universities
world-wide. Partnerships with universities are an essential component
of AstraZeneca's research and development activities and as such
are greatly valued for three major reasons:
— to further AstraZeneca's research
objectives;
— to develop networks with academics
to facilitate knowledge exchange;
— to support the training and education
of skilled scientists and clinicians who might also contribute
to AstraZeneca's business as future employees.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
4. We are encouraged by the allocation of
£2.2 billion to the Research Councils from the Science Budget
by the Office of Science and Technology (Ref 1. figures for 2004-05).
It is important that such funding is channelled into world-class
research that brings positive benefit to the UK science base.
This coupled with effective knowledge transfer systems with industry
and public services, leading to innovative products, as well as
improved management and motivation, should result in benefit to
the UK economy as a whole.
5. The amount of the total budget that is
dedicated to Knowledge Transfer (KT) is not transparent. We find
it difficult to obtain figures from each research council for
its own spend on KT. The current allocation of £79 million
(Ref 1. figures for 2004-05), largely delivered through HEIF,
whilst not insignificant, only represents a small fraction of
the total budget allocation. We very strongly believe that the
proportion of funding on KT should be increased. The value of
the total research investment made by the OST will not be realised
unless KT is highly promoted, rigorously pursued and adequately
funded.
6. Research Council funded projects in universities
require more stringent project planning and project management
than is the situation today in order to ensure that money is not
wasted and potentially exploitable ideas and discoveries are not
left undeveloped.
7. Evidence of robust timelines and clear
success criteria for projects must be developed if we are to derive
maximum economic benefit from the investment in research in the
UK. Furthermore, performance metrics must be drawn up that can
be the basis for incentives/rewards and that emphasise that quality
exploitation and KT endpoints are more important than quantity
outputs.
8. The Research Councils play a critical
role in the development of the knowledge economy and science base
in the UK. It is, therefore, vital that the Research Councils
continue to develop partnerships with industry and universities
and critically important to do more to ensure the visibility of
such schemes in the user community.
9. Continuous supply of skilled scientists
and engineers is a major concern to employers. Consequently the
provision of excellent research training in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics by the Research Councils is critically
important. It is imperative that Research Councils, RC UK and
employers work in partnership to ensure delivery of world-class,
relevant, STEM research training and skills base improvement.
10. One of the most powerful ways to transfer
knowledge is through the transfer of people. We suggest that the
Research Councils encourage universities to participate in interchange
programmes between university and industry at the fellowship level
to supplement the excellent CASE award post-graduate training
schemes.
11. Additional benefit could also accrue
from raising the profile of current beneficial schemes. Furthermore,
the Research Councils should consider ways to increase the flexibility
of the various CASE schemes that exist.
12. We commend the Research Councils' open
and consultative approach to the development of Knowledge Transfer.
We suggest that, identifying the appropriate user community and
continually engaging in discussion and debate of any new schemes,
will ensure that they are fit for purpose with concomitant benefit
to the UK as a whole.
13. We recognise the extensive nature of
the science supported by the Research Councils. It is important
to focus on strategic activities for the UK, building on strengths
and sharing best practice both within the Research Councils under
the auspices of RC UK and also internationally.
PROMOTION OF
COLLABORATIVE WORKING
BETWEEN RESEARCHERS
AND PARTNERS
IN INDUSTRY,
INCLUDING IN
THE CREATIVE
INDUSTRIES AND
SME'S
14. The routes for promoting collaborative
working between Research Councils and industry appear to function
reasonably well in some instances. At various levels in our organisation
and at different interfaces, AstraZeneca is engaged in dialogue
with the Research Councils. The interface between Research Councils
and Universities and Industry is less obvious. This suggests to
us that more should be done to define and develop this tripartite
interface.
15. In order to ensure that science training
and research in the UK remains excellent it is paramount that
the Research Councils market and promote collaborative working
more effectively than they do at present. By taking into account
the views of their customer communities, the Research Councils
can capitalise on the investment made by Government.
16. Collectively, the Research Councils operate
a number of research training schemes such as the CASE scheme,
Doctoral Training Accounts and Masters training that have brought
significant benefits to all parties in terms of quality of research
project and training, experience of working in an industrial environment
and promoting links between academia and industry. It is our very
strong view that such schemes receive long term funding. Although
we recognise that pump priming may have a role in some instances,
research training and skills development in STEM should be a strategic
activity and not supported on a short term financial basis. The
EPSRC support for collaborative training accounts including a
Masters Training package was strongly welcomed by AstraZeneca
as it provided a means by which we could target training to our
key skills areas, such as the MSc course in Statistics with Application
in Medicine at Southampton University. We are concerned that due
to a lack of effective dialogue between stakeholders, courses,
such as the one at Southampton, that is considered to by industry
to be very valuable, may be lost due to lack of long-term financial
provision.
17. Where the Research Councils have provided
a framework for industry and universities to work together in
schemes such as LINK, this has fostered collaborative research
activity.
18. It is important that the Research Councils
continue to develop partnerships with industry and universities
and critically important to enhance the prominence of such schemes
in the user community. Some of the current schemes are not widely
known or understood in some user communities. We would like the
Research Councils to do more to increase the emphasis of current
beneficial schemes such as the CASE studentships.
19. We strongly urge the Research Councils
and RC UK to support and promote more vigorously interchange programmes
between university and industry particularly at the Fellowship
level. Another suggestion would be to target newly qualified research
scientists and specify that Research Council supported individuals
should consider spending their first year in industry. This would
not be a trivial undertaking, but one well worth pursuing. We
welcome the new BBSRC industry interchange programme as this appears
to encompass a degree of flexibility in design and has taken into
account some of the needs of the stakeholders. However, as we
were not engaged in the development of the scheme so we find ourselves
poorly prepared to participate in the initial application process.
We also find the EPSRC Research Assistant Industrial Secondments
very useful.
20. We recognise that our needs for students
are variable. We place some studentships in strategically important
skill areas and others in projects of critical scientific interest.
We suggest that the Research Councils show greater flexibility
in both the number and type of CASE students that can be allocated
to industry. Furthermore, industry and the Research Councils should
continue to build on the strength of their relationship in this
area and target CASE awards and Doctoral Training Accounts to
strategic areas.
21. The recent report from the ABPI—Sustaining
the Skill Pipeline (Ref 2) recommends a role for the Research
Councils and RC UK in the development of strategic skills. We
suggest that the focus should be on the establishment of training
centres at Universities for particular skills such as pathology,
safety pharmacology, mathematics and statistics in experimental
biology and clinical research.
22. The additional funding from OST of £2.5
million to the Research Councils for knowledge transfer (KT) activities
in 2006-07 and 2007-08 and the expectation of comparable funding
from the RDAs is welcomed. Nevertheless, it remains important
that the Research Councils and RDAs seek to maximise the benefit
of this funding for the benefit of the UK economy and do not feel
constrained, by geography, to fund the best science. It is also
important to recognise that all the RDAs are not equal in terms
of their ability to accept and utilise the various forms of KT
and not all will be equally as effective. The NWDA is an exemplar
in terms of promoting partnership working. Through the development
of the UK Biobank, national biomanufacturing centre and National
Institute for Bioinformatics, the RDA has demonstrated significant
leadership and management capability. We believe that the Research
Councils and RDAs working together can be a powerful catalyst
to innovation since the knowledge of centres of scientific excellence
reside with the Research Councils and the knowledge of potential
user community capability resides largely with the RDAs.
23. In order to help to increase R&D
investment in the UK towards the goal of 2.5% it is important
to consider the role of the SME community. The growth of the SME
pool is expected to create a source for future employment. Only
some businesses in this community have the necessary resource
and capability to engage in KT. Research training performed in
an SME will be very different to that provided by a large organisation.
Consequently it is important to target funding towards establishments
that can offer good training to high standards. In all instances,
quality is key. It should be borne in mind that some SMEs are
often under considerable financial pressure and have constraints
on research activity. This may result in limited flexibility in
terms of opportunity and resource to participate effectively in
research training. The Research Councils and RDAs must ensure
that the SME has sufficient financial strength to guarantee completion
of any Studentship or Fellowship.
24. Technology transfer appears well developed
in most of the established Research Councils. The development
of the Drug Discovery Group by the MRC appears to be a sound strategy
and there are a number of good examples of schemes to promote
technology transfer. Provision of Pre-seed corn funding by the
Wellcome Trust and seed corn funding by the Rainbow fund should
enable ideas to progess towards commercial exploitation and are
positive moves. However, whilst evaluation of ideas is reasonable
in some universities, it is important that such early projects
are well managed. There is a great need to improve the monitoring
of ideas and projects in universities that arise from Research
Council funding such that valuable opportunities for exploitation
of research results are not lost. It is possible to envisage a
tiered approach to monitoring methods and project management such
that small scale funding is associated with general good management
techniques and significant investments by the Research Councils
are accompanied by rigorous project management measures.
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
AND COMMUNICATION
25. AstraZeneca typically interacts with
the Research Councils in a variety of ways. We generally meet
with representatives of the BBSRC, EPSRC and NERC on an annual
basis to discuss research funding priorities, studentships, knowledge
transfer and the various Research Council schemes. We respond
to consultations and discuss specific issues as they arise. In
addition, through our representation on trade organisations namely
the ABPI and CBI we have additional opportunities to provide comments
on the work of all of the Councils and provide input to any sector-based
view.
26. AstraZeneca scientists and clinicians
also participate on review panels and committees of the MRC, BBSRC,
NERC and EPSRC as well as the Wellcome Trust, RC UK and the Royal
Society. AstraZeneca is a recipient of the BBSRC and EPSRC industrial
partnership CASE award schemes and is an active partner in research
collaborations with BBSRC, MRC, NERC and EPSRC. It is our experience
that such direct interaction is the most beneficial way to influence
the research supported by the Research Councils in order to ensure
that the UK science base remains world-class and that the UK is
seen as an attractive place to conduct research. We strongly suggest
that NERC move to a position where they can operate an Industrial
CASE quota system in the same way as the BBSRC Industrial Partnership
CASE scheme. The latter system brings much efficiency and has
the time line required to ensure that first class honours students
can be identified for projects.
27. NERC has operated an annual KT Announcement
of Opportunity against three criteria (1) CONNECT, (2) Good Ideas
and (3) Networks. The CONNECT scheme requires 50% funding or support
in kind from the stakeholder. These are full submissions and the
proposals are graded on science excellence first and KT second.
We believe that this is entirely appropriate for the CONNECT scheme.
However, it is our view that the Good Idea's and Networks schemes,
which are designed to promote stakeholder involvement and communication
that will lead to the identification of a future research agenda,
should be judged on KT criteria primarily. In these schemes because
the science content is under development, it would be expected
to score medium to low (A4L or A3) although the KT score can be
high (A4H or A5). The scientific content will be developed by
the Network or the Good Idea as the project progresses. At present
projects with a high KT potential are not being funded because
NERC always grade on a "blue sky" science first and
foremost. It is our experience that some good networks fail because
of this.
28. One outstanding example of stakeholder
engagement and collaborative working is the new partnership between
the BBSRC, MRC, Higher Education Funding Councils, the British
Pharmacological Society and a consortium of pharmaceutical companies
(AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer) to establish an £11
million dedicated fund to increase capacity building in integrative
mammalian biology. The pharmaceutical sector identified a clear
need and also an opportunity for the UK to consolidate and strengthen
the training of physiologists and pharmacologists. This partnership
is the culmination of dialogue, persistent effort and leadership
in order to stem the decline in in vivo science capacity in the
UK.
29. Other examples of successful partnership
models exist and AstraZeneca has recently entered into an agreement
with the EPSRC to develop a Doctoral Training Centre in targeted
therapeutics at the University of Nottingham that will provide
funding for 25 PhD students.
30. However, we must not become complacent.
There are some schemes, such as the Industrial Partnership CASE,
that are durable and well valued. Even so, as RCs and organisations
such as ours, continue to evolve, there is the need to explore
together and to develop new ways of working in partnership. Strong
leadership and effective communication will be important aspects
of this process.
RESULTS AND
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
31. We are encouraged to see performance
metrics for a healthy UK science and engineering base and for
better exploitation. It is important that the metrics reflect
the objectives for each Research Council, are sufficiently stretching
and are clearly measurable and transparent to all. In addition,
robust metrics are often developed during discussion with stakeholders
including the user group and, in this regard, we were pleased
to see the RC UK KT external challenge event and be invited to
take part in this consultation.
CO -ORDINATION
BETWEEN THE
COUNCILS AND
THE ROLE
OF RC UK
32. AstraZeneca welcomed the formation of
the RC UK group. One expectation was that such an overarching
body would provide leadership and direction to the eight Research
Councils. Whilst the mission statement of RC UK is commendable,
it is not clear to us what additional value RC UK has delivered
to the effectiveness of the research, training and KT activities
of the eight RCs. Although RC UK has played a role in bringing
together joint schemes such as the Business Plan Competition and
the Young Entrepreneurs Scheme, in practice it appears that RCUK
acts as little more than facilitator to the eight research councils.
At present RC UK exists as a virtual group comprising Council
staff from the eight RCs whilst the eight RCs are legal bodies
incorporated by royal charter. We suggest that RC UK focus on
performing its function to optimise the ways that the eight RCs
work together by creating a forum to share best practice across
the Research Councils. This will improve efficiency and add value
to the operations of the Research Councils.
33. Other areas where AstraZeneca believes
that RC UK may wish to consider greater involvement include:
— Development of impact and KT measures
for all RCs.
— Development of very transparent assessment
criteria against which KT submissions are assessed.
— Publication of success rates for
funding in the different schemes.
— Promotion of a common set of schemes
(where appropriate) for all research councils, for example the
Industrial Partnership CASE scheme.
— Provision of a common entry point
for interfacing with RCs.
— Progression to act as a governance
and reviewing body with accountability to the OST.
34. We hope that this brief response is
helpful to your inquiry into Research Council support for knowledge
transfer. We would be pleased to share with you our views in greater
detail than this short consultation document allows.
REFERENCES
1. http://www.ost.gov.uk/research/funding/budget05-08
2. http://www.abpi.org.uk//publications/pdfs/2005-STEM-Ed-skills-TF-Report.pdf
January 2006
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