UK biotech companies reportedly raised over $1 billion in equity finance between June and August 2020, according to data from published by the BioIndustry Association (BIA) and Clarivate.

This makes it the highest quarter for investments in the sector on record, placing it on track for its best year ever recorded.

The new report showed that £119 million was raised through the year’s first Initial Public Offering, with a further £282 million raised through Venture Capital.

Another £601 million was raised through other public financings on both London and New York exchanges, demonstrating that biotech share prices continue to perform well on both sides of the Atlantic.

“In a year where COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to the global economy it is fantastic to see the strong investment picture for UK biotech continue to gather pace,” said Steve Bates, chief executive of the BIA

Bruntwood SciTech has been appointed development partner for the £210 million Birmingham Health Innovation Campus, which will offer facilities to foster health and life science businesses while providing a new magnet for inward investment.

Development of the Campus it to create up to 10,000 new jobs and generate an additional £400 million gross value added (GVA) for the regional economy by 2030, under a 10-year masterplan that provides up to 657,000 sq ft of state-of-the-art lab, office and incubation space.

The first phase of development includes a new 133,000 sq ft purpose built six-storey building, which will be home to the University’s Precision Health Technologies Accelerator (PHTA) – providing incubation space, wet and dry labs, clean rooms, prototyping and maker space – and includes the Birmingham Precision Medicine Centre and Healthcare Technologies Innovation Hub.

The site will also be a hub for larger SMEs and scaling commercial businesses working in medtech, biopharma, precision medicine, healthcare AI and genomics, with the facilities and business support on offer aiming to accelerate the development and deployment of new drugs, diagnostics and healthcare technologies to patients and provide a pathway for innovation challenges in the NHS to be met at scale.

“This is a huge opportunity for the UK’s life science sector,” said Dr David Hardman, managing director of Bruntwood SciTech-Birmingham. “By creating an environment that will not only help businesses to form, scale, collaborate and grow, we will establish a new thriving life sciences hub, which will create much needed capacity for the West Midlands and help to attract further international investment to the region and beyond.

“Working alongside Birmingham Health Partners, Birmingham Health Innovation Campus will help to align academic, NHS and industry capabilities. It will also provide additional much-needed world class facilities for pioneering healthcare businesses and will bolster the UK’s position as a life sciences leader on the global stage.”