Property developer and venture builder Pioneer Group has partnered with the UK’s national innovation agency to support life science businesses.
Pioneer Group and Innovate UK are inviting life science founders to participate in its Launch Programme, which provides support to spinouts and entrepreneurs looking to take ideas from the lab to market.
The initiative is for members of the Pioneer Group ecosystem and founders from Innovate UK’s ICURe programme, a pre-accelerator for researchers looking to commercialise research.
The collaboration extends to the “Exploit” phase of the Innovate UK programme, which provides up to 12 weeks of support and gives the opportunity to apply for up to £300,000 in funding.
The programme’s latest cohort includes entrepreneurs from the likes of SHARP Genomics, NunaBio, OncoAssign, TrueView, Klas Therapeutics, and VITA.
The programme follows the Treasury’s publication of an independent review into the university spinout ecosystem. The review included a recommended upper stake limit for universities investing in spinouts. The measures were broadly welcomed by investors and universities.
“With the recent release of the spin-out review, providing support for spinout founders in business-building activities and further assistance in commercialisation through industry collaborations has never been more crucial to improve the creation and growth of university spinout companies,” said Rayner Lim, commercialisation programmes support manager and interim lead for ICURe.
“As part of offering post-support for life science ventures emerging from the ICURe programme, ICURe collaborated with Pioneer Group to accelerate life science ventures with the greatest potential.”
Pioneer Group’s assets consist of over four million square feet of highly leased office, lab and manufacturing space across the UK and Ireland. The group has property in key hubs including London, Cambridge, Nottingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin.
In June, Pioneer Group secured planning permission for a 54,500 square foot lab space in Cardiff.