Brexit: Medical Research in UK to Stall

The UK’s world-class medical research could stall drastically if the future of drug regulation after Brexit is not cleared up, according to Professor Jeremy Farrar, head of the biomedical research charity the Wellcome Trust.

Farrar told a meeting organised by the UK’s medicine regulator, the Medicines & Healthcare Regulatory Agency, that investors may soon start to withdraw their research funding. “If that clarity is not forthcoming and people can’t be sure of their long-term stability and the clarity of those future relationships, then inevitably that will be factored into their investment decisions,” he said.

Golden Age of Medicine

“What is needed is clarity around where the negotiations are going soon so that people who are planning their investments today for 2021, 2022 and 2025, which is what boardrooms are currently doing, get it as quickly as is possible,” Farrar said.

“We are in a golden age of the development of medicine. If you look around the world to those countries which are relatively isolated in terms of just a national regulatory agency, as opposed to being part of a wider regulatory environment, the uptake of that innovation does tend to be slower.

All negotiations are complex but if people are willing to compromise where necessary and people are willing to ensure that ultimately the [well-being] of EU citizens and those of this country in a post-Brexit world are at the heart of those negotiations, then I think it’s do-able.”

Medical companies have had large incentives to work in the UK through the NHS providing an easy fast track for  development and the European Medicines Agency being based until now in London’s Canary Wharf.

The EMA works closely with US and Japanese standards of medicine, meaning drugs can be developed quickly and introduced rapidly into the global market. That means the whole world’s medical future will feel the impact of a disruption to that sleek process, and costs are sure to escalate without the efficiency of today’s system.

Amsterdam Bid

The European Union will of course carry on after the UK’s departure in March, 2019, and Amsterdam’s bid earlier this year to become the new home the EMA gave a prophetic sense of the seismic waves that Brexit will send through medicine.

“As a consequence of the UK’s departure from the EU, the Agency will relocate from London,” the Dutch bid noted. “The uncertainty surrounding the decision-making on the new host country poses serious threats to the business continuity of the agency, the broader EU regulatory medicines network and consequently European public health.

It may lead to the departure of a significant number of the agency’s staff which may contribute to disrupting or delaying the availability of new drugs, or disrupt the safety monitoring of existing medicinal products in the EU,” it said.

“The UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the expected loss of the considerable contribution of the UK’s regulatory agencies will have significant consequences for the functioning of the EU medicines regulatory network.” More nationalist Brits and Brexiteers may take heart from the recognition of the UK’s considerable contribution to Europe-wide medical regulation but the impact of separation will be felt across the industry worldwide.

by Stewart Vickers

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