We considered how the sector is ever evolving through technological advances and changing trends, and how staying current and acquiring new skills (and combining these with existing experience) can open up opportunities for career development.
This webinar provides an overview of the current landscape, areas of growth and investment, where to find training opportunities and the types of careers available across a broad spectrum of technologies including complex therapies, advanced manufacturing, data driven drug discovery and more.
So good good afternoon everybody and welcome today’s webinar by the Bia on reskilling for future growth Technologies we’re hoping today to give you a really good overview of the current landscape across the UK that’s areas for growth and investment looking at where you can find useful training materials um and access online
Development uh activities the sort of types of careers that might be available right now across all sorts of digital Technologies and complex manufacturing the speakers today have really given up their time to to talk to you about their knowledge uh of the ecosystem and the things that they know about kind of future
Careers what today is not is specific job opportunities but we will be following up with everybody afterwards sending out resources and links to lots of really useful tools and tips to help you think about those next those next steps in your career so hopefully uh by the end of
Today you will have some really good ideas of where the growth sectors are in the UK and the sorts of job opportunities that are out there and the sort of careers that are available give you something to think about as you go into the festive period just to think
About where where those next steps might be so we’ve got a range of speakers today um and our first one is going to give us a really nice overview of the current landscape across the UK so Ben over to you thank you very much Kate for that
Introduction um yeah so my name is Ben fwell I’m a principal consultant with the sideline and evaluate Consulting and analytics team based in London I’ve been with Seline for about seven years uh and I now head up our bdnl uh practice area uh and today I’m just really going to
Set the scene for the webinar uh showing some uh key trends that we’ve observed here at Seline over the last year uh with a few uh predictions and insights to what we expect to happen in 2024 so uh to begin I’ll just comment uh briefly on the state of the global biof
Farer R&D pipeline as we’ve observed it here at Seline uh so the chart here uh we show the total biof farer industry pipeline from uh 2001 to 2023 as recorded in lines farmer projects so active products in uh in clinical development uh and as we can see there’s
A trend upwards over the time period shown um with uh the state of the pipeline being you know frankly it’s still at the largest it’s ever been uh so there’s still growth we have seen some slowdown in the growth um in recent years uh as there was a bit of an
Explosion uh during the pandemic uh which has slowed slightly but still the main message is that the pipeline is is as large as it’s ever been so if we look to break this down slightly more to see what might be driving this growth uh we can look at the uh status of the
Pipeline by therapeutic class or or therapy area uh and as we see uh anti-cancer products um or products in in development for oncology indications continue to dominate uh the the pipeline um even with substantial growth between 2022 and 2023 uh where now we’re seeing um oncology constituting almost 40% of all
Drug development uh which has increased from about 30% over the last 10 years all the other therapy areas or the next largest therapy area so uh products in development for neurology metabolic or anti or um anti-infectives uh are approximately onethird of the size but each of these has also uh observed
Growth uh over the last um few years uh and what we can also do uh with farmer projects is look at um uh the products not just by their therapy area but by their modality let’s say so biotechnology products um continue to increase as well again with now over 40%
Of products in development uh really being products related to biotechnology rather than classic uh small molecules uh and the last Trend another that we’ve seen um continuing to increase is the the expanding scope of products in development for rare diseases uh and how this continu continues to uh continue to
Increase so uh now we’ve uh pulled out both biotech and rare diseases we can quickly look at those in a little bit more detail so uh as we’ve observed and as we’ve seen the proportion of the pipeline uh constituted by products relating to biotechnology has increased
Um over the past 20 years to to the point now where it seems to be uh at about 44% uh firstly of course being driven by the rise of monol antibodies and subsequently by the growth of celling Gene therapies uh in in the last few years
Um uh where celling gene therapy has had a prolong period of double digit growth uh where now we record over 2,000 products uh of course these can overlap uh celling Gene therapies of course uh can overlap but 2,000 products uh within the celling gene therapy category um and
Uh so the expansion is slowing uh now uh but what this means ultimately is uh you know we can only expect more approvals related to celling gene therapy uh in coming years as we’ve seen if there’s been so many more products uh entering the pipeline uh and particularly uh the
Expansion of cell and Gene Therapies in um indications outside of oncology uh so as as uh these new modalities uh see success in other areas we expect um investment and therefore more interest and uh more development to follow uh in areas outside of oncology where these new and Innovative therapies have been most
Successful initially uh of course it’s not the end of the story for uh small molecules as well uh but small molecules are always going to be important uh to development and what we’ve seen Trends relating to small molecules in recent years uh is the um uh let’s say advances
In related Technologies so uh unlocking new targets for small molecules so one example would be uh targeting RNA with small molecules which has been facilitated by developments in Mass spectrometry where it’s actually been possible to design small molecules that can Target RNA as a as a as a legitimate therapeutic
Target so now we wait to see uh the next wave uh of of therapies um whether that be uh those related to RNA or or RNA based Therapeutics or targeted protein degradation or other uh newer modalities um that will continue to drive the growth of Biotech uh and the The
Increased proportion of Biotech and new modality related products uh in the pipeline uh so next uh just a brief comment on the state of rare disease drug development so um as we recorded in Pharm projects as of as of last year biofarma is addressing 718 uh individual rare diseases which
Has doubled over the last 10 years um but of course a huge white space remains in this area um as there are a to toal of over 7,000 known rare diseases um and again related to um technological advances and and general scientific advances uh as as fundamental scientific research continues and understanding um
The pathology of of these rare diseases uh we hope that it will allow for the development of true uh disease modifying treatments for for all these uh diseases where there are currently no available treatments uh the pipeline is continuing to grow uh in for rare diseases at
Double Digit in uh Pace almost 10% um each year and this is accompanied by a huge rise in rare disease clinical trials um that started in 2022 as well um and there’s interest from across uh the board um in rare diseases with of course you know small small companies uh
Biotechs focusing on specific diseases but the majority of the large farmer uh also getting on board uh with a focus on rare diseases with over 50 % of their pipeline being associated with rare diseases in particular uh rare oncology um diseases so uh just with that just a few
Very brief comments on takeaways and predictions for next year and perhaps some trials to watch in 2024 a very nice review article published in nature a few weeks ago uh just highlighting again some Trends or some some new ideas that are expected to come through uh in 2024
Where we’re looking at um applying base editing to uh LDL cholesterol loow so this would be a single CSE R mRNA encoding base editor um inside a lipid nanop particle uh a t- cell vaccine for HIV uh so a CMV based Vector aiming to induce sustained t- cell response um so
To prevent acquisition of HIV um related to what saying about indication expansion or or the growth of uh celling gene therapy outside of oncology uh the first application of stem cells for Parkinson’s Disease um so this would be applying um or transplanting dopen neurons directly
Into the brain um for the first time in Parkinson’s disease uh and then lastly um an investigation into adcs for brain metastasis so uh not just the drug um in her2 itself in Trials but actually uh a more broader investigation into whether adcs can be effectively used interally
Despite their relatively large size so lots of really interesting work um going on uh and um we just hope to and wait to see uh the successes uh of these new modalities uh and these new applications of existing Technologies next year and the and the growth that that will
Hopefully Drive uh in in the sector and the interest and funding in the sector so uh with that hopefully that sets the scene and I’ll now pass on to Rebecca to uh speak next thank you hi folks I don’t know uh yes you can see me wonderful and just by true
Interaction because I’m just looking at a black screen if you could just say if you someone could put in the chat if you can hear me all right that would be super too um so yeah wonderful to be here and thank you very much Chloe um
Wonderful to be here and thank you Kate for um asking me to join um you all today Kate’s briefing to me was you’re a bit atypical which I thought was a wonderful introduction um and I think today I know that a number of people on the call are thinking about um different
Areas of maybe positioning their career thinking about reskilling or or you know um changing maybe their um career trajectory and I think that um Kate and this is the moment that Kate as chair can say that’s not what you should be talking about um Kate invited me
Today to just kind of say how did how did you get to where you are because it’s not been in any fo shape of form a linear journey and and Kate please please keep me honest about that um so I’m privileged to be the UK digital and
Data science Innovation lead here at Ros UK my my background is I kind of staggered into all of my roles um so my background is in Psychology fell in love with clinical research and you just heard Ben talk about dopaminergic um neurons being transplanted into um brains of of patients potentially so my
First dance with clinical research actually with was with um parkinsonian patients and and their families and then I was hooked I was like I’m going to be a neuroscientist I don’t really know what that is is or what that looks like but I’m in love with the brain it’s the
Most amazing machine I think we’ll ever own um or ever have the privilege of of owning and what happens to it when it’s damaged so I then went and did a PhD and NHS post at the National Hospital for neurology and neurosurgery um and that basically looked at can we find structural or
Functional um signals of poor outcomes for patients that are that are having a part of their brain removed because it’s the Genesis of seizures particularly for temporal lobe epilepsy I then had the privilege of um working in the welcome trust at uh doing neuroimaging again with stroke survivors and with patients
Uh living with brain cancer and just what I want to kind of underscore here is even that is is is quite um yeah please ask me any questions as well right because otherwise it just becomes a bit of therapy for me um but even that going from kind of psychology to
Neuroscience was quite a jump um and quite a a steep learning curve but basically it was about how I positioned myself it on my TV and um I hope this doesn’t sound condescending but I think that that’s that’s been a theme throughout my career to date is kind of saying
How What I’ve Done how can that be useful moving forward ws and am I applying for a job that potentially if I can already do it I shouldn’t be applying because I think a job is there to stretch you right you’re there to acquire skills or at least that’s that’s
My heris to life and then you get to this te Junction as an academic so I did some post dos um particularly in psychopharmacology so that was on um very fortunate that was on channel 4 um and it was on um cannabis essentially medicinal cannabis um the best thing
About about that though was that I got a home office dispensation to carry cannabis around London as you can probably imagine my folks didn’t really think it was a great job because uh that you know your folks they just want to be like yeah you know an Academia and I’m
Like actually I’m kind of a an okay drug dealer so um so so that was that was slightly awkward um but it was a wonderful learning experience and I had some media training and things like that and then you get to this T Junction I think as an academic of going well what
Do I do now do I stay in Academia do I and do something else and I’m very much a a home pigeon and I didn’t want to leave home too much I love you know being with my family and so I didn’t want to kind of jump around the country
Doing postto um and so I decided to try and use my quantitative skills um in forming policy so I was um fortunate to join the health Foundation which those of you don’t know is a non-governmental as an NGO and go how do we use this big
Data you know the NHS as fragment as the data landscape is how do we use that information in order to try and inform policy um and what I learned there was was quite interesting I leared that you go from being a researcher where patients very kindly during the presurgical
Investigations let you um scan them and then you go into a room for nine months talking about data sharing and getting in my view nowhere very quickly um so that was quite a um a frustration for me um but the point was also I had to learn R so the statistical
Programming language I’ve never done that because as a as a neuroimage person you basically click buttons the skill that you have is going does the experiment Mak sense do these area of the brains that have lit up essentially are the ones that we expected or not um
So so that was also a bit of a jump and then fortuitously IBM were looking for these things called Data scien and I was like and this was before it was like the the coolest or sexiest thing of the 20th century to do or 21st century and um and
I thought well how hard can that be right I identify as a scientist and I work with data and surely it’s just a thing turns out it was actually a proper thing um so off I went to Ohio for a number of weeks and I I still remember
Calling home being like what am I doing here like I’m with people that um their background is like I built a computer when was an embryo and um I I won chess championships when I was two and I built a computer when I was four and I was
Like oh yeah I just you know never done any coding in my life so that was a very steep learning curve but eventually I crafted a role in um Watson Health um so leading that European business and the fact that they’re selling it has nothing
To do with me um and then one day they said ah and it’s always a Friday isn’t it you always get like you know called around on a Friday we’re we’re moving you all into the financial part of the business now I can’t even run my own
Bank account um and I was like I can’t advise clients around wealth under management you know I can barely budget myself in a week so that’s probably not a good idea um so I gave him my notice to my family’s absolute dismay because I just kind of and I’m hoping what I’m
Trying to get across too is I have no plan other than I just want to go to organizations where I get to use my quantitative skills in healthcare and hopefully Drive societal Goods um and so I gave him my my um yeah I just said no
I’m not doing that um and then um I didn’t really know what I was going to do so I spam LinkedIn that would be another area I think you know to encourage you to do like networking and and kind of reaching out to people um and an organization called KPMG replied
And said oh well you know we have and I didn’t really know what they are or what they did they are a big accountancy firm one of the big four as termed and said oh we’re looking to bring in our public sector part of the organization how do
We use data to help clients and I thought well that sounds brilliant so I eventually sculpted a role there and um decided to leave after um I was a co-lead on um building the workforce part of the organization for nighty girl London and then again just fortuitously
I someone said oh this place called rash didn’t know who they were are looking for um a data person um and would you like to come and have a chat and so I did and so my role to date is about how do we work with an ecosystem of Partners
Whether that be our regulator the MH whether that be um our European cousins um whether that be uh the NHS or universities or our government to go how do we move a technology through the software development life cycle um and what does that look like what are the
Skills around that um and so I’ve been in post two and a half years who knows if I’ll be in post after this webinar we we shall see um but again I came into farmer having no clue at all what farmer really was or did and I think one of the
Things I just want to leave you with is you heard Ben talk about gene therapy mRNA Technologies spoke about the pipeline and one of the things that I just want to underscore is we’re very good in Farmer um a talking about medicines and drugs because that is our
Fundamental business and what we do as an organization and I feel very proud to work in that industry however how do you how do you find the right ligan for example and how do you monitor through clinical trials what do you really measure what matters to patients so there’s this whole piece
Around digital endpoints at the moment in clinical trials you know how do we make clinical trials more inclusive using technology or not using technology and then when you move through the kind of um farmer value chain you can tell that I’ve been in Industry two and a
Half years um but when you move from that kind of early research and development phase to that postmarket authorization phase every single piece of that pie requires a skill set that is is not in place at the moment and our trade body the abpi association of British farmer cutical industry recently
Did I know we will send a link uh a skills Gap assessment and essentially we are using and I know that these are kind of um jazz hand terms but we are using artificial intelligence and forms of machine learning to to try and see how can we accelerate getting
Medicines to patients and then when we do get them to patients how do we then um monitor them in the real world right because that’s very different from a clinical trial and how do we innovate in pharmacovigilance so I would encourage you I was just
About to move on Kate thank you I would encourage you to kind of look at those things what I did was I had the internet and the laptop so I upskilled myself using um online courses like corser and others there are others available but you can order them for free and with
That thank you for your time and I will hand over to Ian thank excuse me thank you Rebecca um so good afternoon everyone hopefully you can hear me okay let me know if you can’t um as you can probably tell from what you see on the screen I’ve been
Around for quite a long time um and uh I’ve seen this industry EB and flow positively and negatively over probably four decades actually which is a very long time um so I am originally a pharmacist and a small molecule guy and spent most of my career in gr Smith Klein
I retired in 2017 um and uh I wasn’t quite ready to hang up my boots and I’ve had a second career for the last six years or so in celling gene therapy and I have found a transition personally absolutely stimulating and I’ll come on to that a little bit later um I’m also
Very optimistic about the future in the UK uh for our industry and particularly in manufacturing and I’ll try substantiate that you saw the data from Ben which was amazing and what I’ll try and do is support that um data with a bit of how it feels so 2023 I’ve transitioned through
The year um from neutral probably not pessimistic but neutral about our prospects as an industry to optimistic as I mentioned the reason for that is actually government policy believe it or not so I’ve coupled with all of the uh data that ured about the science which
Is phenomenal um I sense I feel that the government policy um is particularly helpful the other thing I think that made me neutral to towards a little bit pessimistic at the beginning of the year was the the financial situation that we’re in that has undoubtedly affected the smaller end of our
Industry um and and that is a transient condition the more permanent condition will be driven by the science and it’ll be driven by the governmental policy so we currently have a conservative government that recognizes manufacturing I am going to talk about manufacturing briefly uh recognizes that is a real
Value add to the UK economy and 520 million has been pledged to the industry manufacturing sector Life Sciences um from 2025 now the conservatives may not get in um in the next general election but the labor party also sees life sciences and Manufacturing is a very important um plank of their strategy
That will become more visible in in in the coming months so I am very positive and optimistic uh my job at the moment is I well I’m a part-time guy but I chair uh Rosland cell Therapies in Edinburgh and the cell and gene therapy catapult now
There’s a lot of data on the cell and gene therapy catapult particularly about the strength and health of um the cell and gene therapy sector of our industry I suggest you just look that up on the website um Steve will give you some other data as well I think that will be
Helpful um why did I transition well firstly the science is really interested I’m not a great scientist I’m a manufacturing guy I’m a practical person I like to make things um and maybe that’s best exampled with Rosland Cell Therapy which is in Edinburgh so you may have noticed on a little in Brackets
Casg um is a medicine that was attributed to crisper it’s a product for sickle cell disease and for bet betalia that’s made in Edinburgh and whilst Ben’s data looked at the number of products emerging through there’s another very very important factor in this which is cell and gene therapy is
Now moving into what I would call much higher prevalence disease it’s not really rare disease CLE cell disease is not rare betalia is no longer rare and it’s creating a huge opportunity for growth um the UK is very well positioned for this because we’ve been at the front
End of it partly because of the Catapult but partly because of the great academic signs we’ve got so I remain very optimistic and I think there will be growth in the celling gene therapy area I think there will be growth in the UK because of our science because of of our
History and because of the government emerging policy which is absolutely critical um and and again just to to I’m I’m kind of trying to emphasize the transition process if you are predominantly small molecule background to selling gene therapy could be a little bit intimidating but actually in manufacturing manufacturing is the skill
Manufacturing is the competence there is an element of of uh celling gene therapy technology being important but if you have the basics in manufacturing this is entirely transferable and just to really back that up at rosin we recruited a new head of quality about 12 months ago and she is predominantly almost exclusively
Small molecule and she has just come in and taken the whole quality and compliance area to a different level so it’s very transferable uh and again just to emphasize with a little bit of numbers uh Rosland Cell Therapy was 50 people two years ago it’s now 250 people
So when when a company like Roslin gets the right kind of product and the Success Through regulator audits as we’ve just seen the opportunity for growth is very very significant so I think if I was leaving you with a couple of messages I am quite a let’s say experienced person or at
Least I have been around for a long time some people might say old so if I can transition from being predominantly um small molecule into celling gene therapy successfully then anybody can and I do think the UK is very very well positioned and so I am going to transfer
To Louise and just say thank you for listening if there’s any questions towards the end I’d be more than happy to uh help answer them thanks Ian hi everyone so I’m Lis Taylor I work for CPI um and I’m just going to take a bit of a different approach to it so I’m
Going to go through um a little bit on AR Therapeutics and vaccines because I know that’s something that’s being talked about a lot um and I just want to hopefully show you this transferable skills and the opportunities in in this one area as as well
So for those of you who don’t know CPI um just really quickly we were founded in 2014 we’ve got over 600 staff um and we do have multiple facilities predominantly across um the northeast of the UK um and we are a high valua high value manufacturing catapult so we
Operate in markets which include things like uh biotechnology Pharma which encompasses the national biologics manufacturing center the RNA Center of accents which I’ll talk about and our medicine’s manufacturing Innovation Center and we also have digital and health Tech teams as well um we’ve got a really important job of sitting between research and
Invention in the commercial market so we we don’t have our own products um we help to get other people’s products to Market as quickly and as successfully um as possible so just to give you a bit of an overview so we’ve got our biologics facility um here we perform development and
Optimization um and look at bespoke manufacturing processes um both with collaborative research and development but also FIFA service offerings um and we work on a a wide range of expertise including Upstream Downstream and analytical so we look at sell fre microbial and mamalian expression systems continuous manufacturing um and also things like
High three-o foot screening and just focusing a little bit more on the RNA Therapeutics before 2020 we’d already been starting to look at encapsulation of self-re expression so when we were approached by the UK’s vaccine task force um we already had some of the skills needed to support um the creation of a
Manufacturing and supply chain for um a self-amplifying RNA vaccine and in September this year we officially opened our dedicated um GMP facility for RNA encapsulating uh manufacturing so this is our facility um it is a purpose-built facility we’ve got QC Labs we’ve got um production Labs um and it’s a modular
Build and another thing that we we wanted to do to support this is we realize that you know yes RNA technology has been around for a while but it’s use has massively increased and is continuing to increase post pandemic and as part of this we realize that actually the skill set
Needed needs developing and needs expanding so um what we’ve done is we’ve put together some courses um that have been developed by our scientists that have hands-on experience to look at things like an instruction to RNA Therapeutics so what are they how do they work um we’ve got manufacturing
Courses we’ve got analytical courses to really help to upskill the industry um and that’s something that I’m just going to touch on because there’s so many transferable skills in this area so when we talk about analytics yes it’s a different modality but I’m sure there’s lots of techniques
There that that you’re already very familiar with um and you know as we said it’s an expanding technology area and this is because we need a lot smaller doses there’s loads of benefits it’s non-integrating uh we can produce it a lot quicker because there’s no host so
We don’t have to run a buou for two weeks um so you can see all these things really help to um increase the opportunities that RNA can um can Target and and just to reiterate that we’re not just talking about vaccines we’ve got things like oligonucleotides RNA therapies we’ve got
Micr rnas um and then also other uh other cancer therapies and and things like that so when we look at how is it different to traditional biotech um so yes we’ve got a genetic sequence of the protein of Interest but we also have no cell line so we’ve
Got no cell line development and like I said we’re we’re not running a bi reactors um it’s more a small scale enzymatic reaction and then at the end we do an encapsulation and filth finish so the facilities are smaller um it’s simpler production but raw materials are more expensive um so
The there are similarities there are differences and just to highlight that further here’s a typical process and and some of you might be very familiar with some of these Technologies so tangental flow filtration chromatography um whereas some of them might be a little bit newer so encapsulation and inv vitro
Transcription and again we can look at how that can move to continuous so some of you might have experienc in continuous digitalization that could be applied as well and just touching on a couple of those uh unit operations when we also think about what experience do we have
On equipment so some of you will be familiar with wave systems tff systems chromatography systems so when it comes to building out facility and building up manufacturing we we’ve got three options really for the workforce we we can buy Talent we can retrain and we can build and when we look at
Retraining comparing it small molecules it’s very similar to the encapsulation it’s low volume um and it’s more chemistry rather than biology and also there’s a lot more solvent handling when we look at the biofarm workforce it’s aseptic working we’ve got liquid handling chromatography tff and filtration
Are all areas we’ll be familiar with and it’s a GMP regulated environment and again just to mention we do have those cses but hopefully what I’m trying to get across here is it might sound like a completely different area to go into but there’s so many translatable skills and um areas that
You’ll have experience in that you’ll be able to apply into this new expanding technology and with that I’d like to hand over to Stephen thank you thanks Louise excellent I’ll just share my slides won’t be a second okay hi everyone I’m Steve Stewart I’m head of skills at selling
Gen therapy cult um I’ve been at selling gene therapy catapult for two and a half years I joined from GSK where i’ um spent just over 10 years um working in skills and talent and apprenticeships so at selling gene therapy catapult we’re involved in several different skills initiatives we’ve got our Advanced therapies
Apprenticeship Community um our attack and that’s been R sorry to inter we can’t see your slides oh I’m so sorry now we can thank thank you oh we practiced that before as well and it’s gone wrong excellent how’s that perfect excellent right um so we’ve got the advanced therapies apprenticeship
Community are attack um for shorts so we’ve got over 340 apprentices um across the UK studying variety of different um disciplines that’s not just early Talent apprentices coming in um it’s roughly 50/50 with early Talent apprentices taking the first job but people using apprenticeships to upskill and grow
Their careers and maybe take second careers and build um an entirely different skill set we also look after the advanced therapy skills training Network or atsn for short because that’s quite a mouthful and within that we’ve got an online training platform um we work with some national training centers
To make sure that we’ve got face-to-face delivery um spread out right across the UK and we’ve got a tool called the career converter as well and I’ll come on to that um in in my session we’ve also got um we’ve just opened um about a year ago um the skills and
Training Laboratories which are based in stevenage they’re taking people through various different courses um really really good space State of-the-art um skills and training lab we’re looking at AR and VR interventions down there um so really good options for people who are looking to to upscale either through the
The training center in Step AG are through our National Training Center Network so Ian set me up really nicely for this with his um comments around the the skills demand report and some of the the positivity that we’ve got in um Advanced therapies at the moment so
Really busy slide and we’ll send the link out so you can download the the skills demand report because there’s lots of really really interesting facts and figures in there but the key bits are these two here that the is over in at the moment we’ve got um
6,232 people in the the sector and we expect in the next five years that’s going to expand to just over 10,000 so 10,161 so just over a 60% increase which is absolutely fantastic to find this this data we spoke to um just over 50 employers within the sector and we think
That they were the the largest employers and we think that covered around about 90% of of all the bio manufacturing um in the UK so we got a really good insight into what companies are looking for where they are now and where they think they’re going to be in in 5 years
Time um and not going into this with in interested time you can see a really steady trend line of that growth within Advanced therapies which Ian was talking about so underneath that we also asked um which job roles people would be looking to recruit into so um again busy
Slide but we we’ll send the link out to download this but you can see um in here are all the different job areas job families that um we ask people about and here in this column is the the predicted increase in 2020 by 2028 so you can see
Every single job family there is ex going to experience hopefully um an increase we also asked people um when we did the surveys where they thought there was a level of concern so the people are really concerned now about the employing people within manufacturing and within Total Quality within Regulatory Affairs
And then an emerging concern is around digital and informatics so the there’s some real opportunity within the sector um for people coming in and and looking to to grow these skills and and develop into these roles so to help people do that I mentioned earlier we’ve got a few um
Tools that that are helping people transition into the sector um one of the the ones we’ve developed is the career converter so through the the weird and wonderful Dark Arts of of data science people can access the career converter it’s totally free and then through the
The data science that sits behind it you can drop your CV in um your job title your job description um it’ll look through that and give you some recommendations about Job roles that could Poss possibly um Su you within the within the sector so this is a fantastic
Tool for people who are are really thinking about what could I do in advanced therapies could I really fit there what skills have I got that are transferable what gaps would I need to fill at the end of this you get a really great report that tells you what roles
That you matched against um which um skills and competencies you’ve got already and then the ones that you might need to develop to to be successful in that role so it gives you a really good indication of what you can move into um at the of it as well you’ll get um the
Opportunity to to speak to myself or one of my team you can click on a link and book an appointment or it takes you through to some recruitment agencies and uh a map of the UK which shows you some of the firms that are recruiting in this
Area so really nice tool to to just start with and understand where you could possibly fit within this sector and what gaps that you’ve got that that you need to fill we’ve also got the online training platform which I mentioned earlier so the online training platform um is free
For people to access uh this training on there for every different budget about 50% of the courses are free at the moment for people to take and it Cates for people with all different levels of experience so you can see from the categories on the right hand side we’ve
Got courses through um everything from bioprocessing through to personal development so people who are are transitioning through jobs at the moment hopefully there’s some really good material on there that will help you with that Journey um there’s some really good stuff about building skills in Project manage management and Leadership
And then also those deeper technical um skills as well so it’s free to register for you just need a license um to go on there and then you can explore all the different elements of training there’s 850 um different pieces of training on there and to help you navigate you can
Click um whichever job roll you’re interested in and it’ll recommend some training for you from intermediate level through to advance so that hopefully you can navigate the system and find something that’s that’s really relevant for you so this fits really really well if you’ve done the career converter and
Identif ifed some of those potential gaps of um in your portfolio when you’re looking to move and transition into a r in advanced therapies you could hopefully fill some of those gaps by going onto the online training platform and seeing um where some of these things
Are that you that you that you could um you could upskill in so that’s a really quick overview of some of the things that we’re doing in um the advance therapy set I think um just going back to the the slide with some of the the different gaps on I
Think um it’s really worth downloading the the skills demand report it gives you really good insight into some of the areas where um our sector really um looking to recruit people into over the coming years and um if you’ve got any questions then I’d be happy to um answer
Them after or um please make contacts um either through the career converter or um contact me directly and with that I’ll hand back to Kate thank you Steve and thank you to to all our speakers today I think you’ve given us a really nice um insight into
What’s happening across the UK uh quite Broad in terms of all the different therapies and the different areas whether it’s manufacturing or digital or rnas or or Gene therapies um so hopefully we’ve given people some some really good insights into into quite a range and I’ve got a couple of questions
In the chat um and I’m going to come to Louise first to answer the question um which I’m just trying to find um it’s about the the technologies that you would recommend sort of looking at first Louise so the question is what are the key Technologies you would recommend
That people retrain on First and I guess to some extent that depends on where their skills lie to start with but I think you touched on some of this in in your presentation J whether Louise is Frozen now I think Louise might be frozen Steve is that something that you can talk
About because you talked about the the career converted there for selling Gene therapies and then perhaps come to come to e in across manufacturing areas yeah yeah um definitely Kate I think um the the career convert is that really good starting point to understand um some of the job roles within within
Our sector there’s on the career converter there’s 16 different job roles there you can have a look at the um on the the atsm website where it’s house you can have a look at the different job titles and and what they Encompass there’s a little bit
Of a job description around each one so you can understand a little bit more about what’s involved in each of these different jobs um and then through the career convert you start to understand some of the skills and capabilities that are associated with them um that brings
That out a little bit more so as well as understanding where you’re matched to it you can do a little bit of an exploration as well around exactly what each job contains and what you need to do that thank you and what what do you
Think in terms of what are the what are the things that people should be should be retraining on and I guess what are the sort of fundamental transferable skills that you see well 100% people should follow their heart and go for what they’re really really really interested and passionate about the
Second thing I would do on that I suggest K is try and find the overlap of what they’re passionate about with what’s growing um and that will guide them as to you know I’m passionate about this and it’s got the best chance for future progression um I would just repeat that
Manufacturing is not quite 100% transferable but not far off and the lady that became our head of quality had never she’d never spent a day in her life in anything associated with other than small molecules and she brought in all of the processes the qms uh all of
The compliance processes and we flew to touchwood because you always need to touch with but we flew through MH and FDA inspections at rosin so I think follow your heart actually do what you’re passionate and in circumstances like this this is a real chance to say
You know what I can really try and do what I want now thank you thank you in and and I think you’re right you know once you’ve got those GMP skills or their sort of you know laboratory behaviors Etc a lot of them is it’s it’s not necessarily the
Technology it’s the the behaviors and the awareness of the environment that you’re operating in isn’t it oh Louise is back now as well so Louise what did you know sorry Kate it seem to kick me out um I I would reiterate what Ian said I think whatever you’re passionate about
Um but also look at those wider skills are there skills that you already have that you could build on so hopefully you know if you are interested in the RNA technology for example I mentioned some of the the systems you might have Downstream experience have a look at how that Downstream experience
Might um support a move into RNA look at online there’s so many um articles videos on what does that process look like what are the companies working in that area reach out to people on LinkedIn um but also some of the softer skills which I know Stephen you said you
Know that there are some free courses on on your platform things like project management um management in general you know really think about where you want to go to next what what areas interest you and how can you kind of um leverage the skills that you’ve got and apply them just to a
Different um yeah different company yeah opportunity yeah thank you for that um and I’ve got we’ve got a question in in here for for Ben actually so um really interested in in all the presentations that have been given there’s a question specifically about noting that there was some decline in biotech and cinge
Therapy in some of your some of your graphs there does this reflect a downturn in the investment and is there expected to be an upturn in 2024 um I think it’s more a reflection of a of a Slowdown so uh we saw very rapid growth between sort of from about
2015 until today um but it it’s as slowdown as uh you know the the let’s say the easy no not easy but the the obvious routes to go were were reached um was technology is reached a certain point but then as further improvements happen we can only imagine it it’s going
To continue um as as we as we lots of people mentioned throughout today um the application of celling gene therapy increasingly outside of what would be considered a rare disease um that Trend I would only expect to um continue um so uh maybe not an upturn immediately in
2024 but I I would imagine that we would still continue to see growth in the area going on for the next five to 10 years certainly and and there’s lots of Technologies related to uh you know the overlaps are going to continue to increase between cell and gene therapy
And chrisberg has n Gene editing base editing um they’re all interl mRNA RNA related Technologies so um uh I I certainly think we’ll we’ll continue to see growth um in the area yeah um and I suppose is is that growth a question for everybody really and and I’ll start with
You Ian in terms of a a question on the growth do you see that being in sort of that large farm area or within the biotech smmes and and and if you’re moving from one to the other what do you see as the transferable skills and and
What specifically a is looking for um over maybe some of that experience within large Pharma having come from one of the biggest in terms of dsk I well I think the the um grow I think will be predominantly in small medium sized Enterprise smes I think in the
Main and that’s always going to be B A we bit more high risk because sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t so I think that the growth will be there and what I observe happening k is that a successful quite quickly gets bought up by a big farmer so they kind of morph
Into each other eventually on people who come in from Big farma actually um and again I don’t just speak for the I used to work for but the sophistication of a big Pharma company is is is far bigger than I thought it was so I found that
Stuff that I thought was normal in big Pharma was quite um unique in smaller companies so I think that people who maybe leave in a big farma environment need to just reflect a little bit on all the things they think are are kind of normal for a big farmer they’re actually very very
Very helpy ful in small uh small companies so I think that that’s often an underappreciated benefit of having been in a big farmer um and I think the other thing that I’d say in that is that you know it’s a bit of a release when you get into small company because you
Know the bureaucracy that does exist in big farma and it does or the process that exists in a big Pharma usually doesn’t exist in a small company so all of a sudden you think wow you can make stuff happen here really really quickly if I had my time again much as I loved
The company I worked for I should have left earlier yeah and I think um some of the the cats that we’ve got online today so both Steve and and Louise you know you work with a large amount of smmes within your your network what are the sort of
Uh differences that you see and and how do you see those roles being being different in different sized organizations so Steve first yeah I think exactly what Ian said I I I’ve transferred from from large farmer to a smaller business and I think sometimes it it can be quite scary um
But the the amount of opportunity that you get I thinking big farmer you kind of expected to stay in your lane a little bit and this is your job and this is what you’re going to do whereas I’ve come to the Catapult and I can get involved in
Absolutely and I’ll be supported to do that and I think that the skills that some of these smaller businesses are looking for is that kind of flexibility adaptability um you can get involved in lots and lots of different things um it’s it it can be it can be it can be
Quite scary if you’ve come from that background and it does take a little bit of a time to to to flex into that but um I think what the the smes are looking for is just that adaptability that flexibility that willingness to get involved in lots and
Lots of different things and what you’ll get back from that is some absolutely fantastic development and we talked about sort of the risk of some of that as well because it’s it’s slightly different working in a smaller organization do you do you see that Louise with the smmes that you work within your
Network I mean yeah it you know it’s always that there’s always going to be an area of risk there because it’s a new technology or a new product that’s coming through but I think as Steve said there’s a lot of opportunities there as well to either put some of your skills
To to use um in a different area or get involved in multiple areas so for example you might be uh technical but you might also get involved with project management maybe some finance and it’s a great opportunity to try out different things that you’re interested in um and
One thing that I would say as well when you’re looking at Job adverts especially for some of the smaller companies you don’t necessarily know what you need so don’t be afraid to say you know I don’t meet all of those criteria but these the this is what I’m bringing um to the
Company and and there might be a a surprise there that actually you know that skill set meets something that we need or sounds interesting and and that might start a different conversation so I think it’s that flexibility and openness um to areas that you know you’re strong in and areas that you know
You want to develop as well yeah thank you L that’s really important isn’t it to to think about actually you don’t need to take all of the boxes on that job advert you can bring something completely different as well and and and perhaps you know that that can shine
Through when you when you come through for the interview so just um in terms of we’ve got sort of three or four minutes left I just wanted to think about sort of your final takeaways for people um in terms of so I’m giving you a heads up so
Just thinking about you know what are those top tips that you could give someone who’s maybe thinking over over the festive period about you know where they’re going to go next where they can apply their skills what are the sort of opportunities that are out there for
Them um so Ben if you don’t mind I’m going to come to you first what is what are sort of top tips from you um yeah I I think I think I mean just thinking about myself um sort of remaining flexible and and what what a career and Consulting is sort of meant
For me um you know you you have your areas of of interest and you but you you learn that the process of of learning about a particular area or or skill or or whatever it might be um a similar sort of story to to what um Rebecca was
Talking about when when she was how you can you know don’t be intimidated by some topic or something that you want to to learn about if you’ve become very strong in in one area or one particular skill um you can certainly do it again in in another one um I I transitioned
From the oil industry into into the farmer industry um so it you know it can be it can be done if if it’s if if the will is there so I think that’s that’s my kind of key uh key thing for remaining flexible and remaining interested uh and things will come and
That’s a really good isn’t it transition from the oil into uh into into farmer Ian what’s your top tip uh I think it would be focus on what you can do Kate so um often times you tend to think of well I don’t know about that and I don’t know
About this but focus on what you can do and then think about how you can app apply that to the Future world not just next year but three or four years from now um think a little bit further ahead if you can and try and plot a see I’m a
Planner so I kind of like to plan so think a little bit how you might plot your course yeah and there is no right answer to this actually no there isn’t Everyone’s an individual aren’t they everyone’s got different passions as you said earlier different passions different different experiences it’s
Thinking about how you can what you can offer what your value is Louise yeah I suppose I would say um be a bit more confident in yourself I think we’re always very a lot of people are very kind of um self- dismissive of of some of the experience and qualities
That they have so don’t forget to kind of give yourself a little bit of a boost and say do you know what I can do this um but also like like you said Ian and and everyone else has reiterated if I’ve not done it before
It’s a challenge I can try I can you know put put my name in the Hat you know have a go I love that have a go that’s a brilliant that’s a brilliant say to to finish on and Steve really quickly what would you say um be confident in your
Transferable skills I think I read some job adverts out there and they’re looking for an absolute needle in haste that no one has got everything they’re asking for on that job advert so you know if you are 60 70 80% right for that go for it and you’ll be amazed at the
Transferable skills you’ve got someone in our industry is absolutely flying and they’ve come from the Brewing industry and you think that the experience that you guys have got is probably far superior to that so just be really confident in what you’ve done um and how
That’s going to help you start to to fly in this sector perfect thank you very much there’s some really good tips there so just want to say a huge thank you to everybody um who’s been online today thank you for sharing your experiences lots of really good tips uh what we’ll
Do is um this is being recorded so we’ll send a copy of the recording and all of the tip sheets and website links that have been mentioned today um to close off the webinar so just with that I’d like to say thank you very much H and I
Wish you all a a great break thank you