It is a source of some frustration that whenever a clever British biotech start-up, often spun out of academia, approaches viability, it is snapped up by investors, often from the United States, prepared to take a longer view.
It is certainly a stance taken by Wellcome Trust, the second biggest funder of medical research in the world, which in 2012 set up Syncona as a home for promising healthcare companies with the intention of keeping them within the British science community until they reached their full potential.
Last November Wellcome injected Syncona into Bacit, a London-listed investment trust, which took in the investment fund of Cancer Research UK, to be run by Syncona’s management. The aim was to offer the chance to invest in such