challenges facing the planet.

How to make clean energy, how to develop

the next generation of medicines,

and how to prevent disease.

But some on the front line are worried

about the future of their research,

especially after Brexit.

I think it's no secret that universities are really not

in favour of Brexit.

As a company now, over half of all of our team

are from outside of the UK.

If the funding becomes UK national only,

that will restrict our ability to expand our work.

The main problem, at least, for my work, is regulations.

We don't know what's going to happen.

I'm going to examine the health of an industry that generates

£70bn a year for the UK economy and employs almost a quarter

of a million people across the country.

But first... that's interesting.

Red.

I suppose it's all the cheese in it.

This is personalised shopping with a difference.

I'm a sucker for both of those.

Yes, I can go with the chickpeas.

I may be shopping in a London supermarket.

But I'm also trying out the latest high-tech weapon

in the fight against the big killer

diseases in modern society.

The device I'm using is synced with an app on my phone, which

is matched to my DNA.

It can tell me if I'm at risk of obesity, hypertension,

or even Type 2 diabetes.

And more than that it can tell me

which foods are likely to increase these risks

and nudge me towards healthier alternatives in real time.

Its inventor, Chris Toumazou, is onhand

to explain why the app is happy for me

to buy some foods but not others.

Huh.

Red

The other one I picked out of the bars was this Snickers.

And that's green.

Okay, Mars out, Snickers in.

Yes.

And let's see why.

Mars bar--

Mars has got 60 grammes of sugar.

Choo!

That was bounding.

Whereas Snickers...

Has got...

44 grammes.

So nearly 15 grammes more sugar.

So, in fact, you were quite low with things

like your obesity gene.

Things like fats, you were quite low with.

So effectively, you are being nudged

towards things that are a lot more

appropriate for your heart.

Putting personal health in the hands of shoppers

could help prevent chronic diseases

that cost the NHS billions.

But so far, few products like DnaNudge

have made it out of UK labs and onto the market.

After the United States, Britain produces

more cited life sciences research

than anywhere else in the world.

But in 2017, the UK ranked 12th out of 18 comparable countries

in the value of its medical technology exports.

Science and innovation clusters across the country

are trying to change that.

Imperial College's White City campus is the latest example.

It covers 23 acres of west London and cost £2bn.

We face huge problems in society at the moment.

Huge global challenges.

And the idea of this campus is to bring different people

together.

Bringing together different cultures obviously

brings together a diversity of thinking.

And it's only with that international linking

and collaboration that we'll solve these problems.

With that in mind, how do you view the prospect of Brexit?

I think it's no secret that universities are really not

in favour of Brexit.

We're really worried that the students will no longer come

from Europe because they bring a fantastic intellectual

dimension.

You know, without these brilliant young students

from Europe, I think we'll be a lesser place.

The ultimate goal is to get researchers and businesses

working on the next generation of products together.

This lab and office space for start-ups.

Sixfold Bioscience is just one of 70 companies

already on campus.

So, we are a biotechnology company

developing novel drug delivery systems for cell gene

therapeutics.

And what you can see here today is our R and D team.

Sixfold is working on new ways to deliver therapies

that will fight diseases like cancer, by fixing faulty genes

or reprogramming living cells.

So if we add more of this protein to these cells,

we can increase the efficacy of our drug delivery.

Thank you.

The scientists on their team get to use

cutting edge equipment at Imperial's NMR lab

and measurement suite.

But more than that, the cluster gives Sixfold's founders

the opportunity to rub shoulders with entrepreneurs, funders,

and potential collaborators.

For you personally, as founders of a biotech company, what

does the opportunity to interact with all these people,

what does it give you?

Just having a great space to do science,

to execute on the science, then to discuss

that with your peers.

They want to come and meet us.

We want to meet them.

And I think it's really a good place to do that.

What we are also allowed to do is actually

share our experience with people that

are even earlier during the entrepreneurial journey.

To share our struggles and hopefully allow other companies

to progress even faster and have a smoother journey.

It goes further than just having companies.

There's a lot of academics and there's

a lot of larger pharma companies that are also in the area.

That makes it a unique environment,

I would say, within London.

And, of course, it's a very international space

for an international company, as you are.

Do you see any threats to that internationalism?

As a company now, over half of all of our team

are from outside of the UK.

We also work a lot with people in the US,

with other areas of academic excellence.

And maybe the government could be

forced into a position to making it easier for those people

to come to work here.

And that's something I think is maybe a potential avenue

or opportunity for us.

The number of new start-ups across all industries in the UK

fell by 12.8 per cent in 2018.

And researchers blamed economic uncertainty caused by Brexit.

On average, London start-ups have fared better

than those in other parts of the country.

But even here, the government has

been keen to help new life sciences

businesses find their feet.

That's because the field is so specialised.

It is immensely difficult, actually,

to find the right research expertise,

the right operational infrastructure,

and the right types of patients to recruit

into clinical studies.

MedCity was launched five years ago

to help businesses find collaborators in industry,

academia, and government.

The project is co-funded by the mayor of London.

London is proud to host the largest investor

base in Europe, and some of the best universities in the world.

But of course there's a little bit, tiny, whiney economic

and political uncertainty in the country at the moment.

But I want to take this moment to say to all of you

that I remain very, very confident.

Come what may, London will continue

to thrive as a great city in which to do business.

I think in a post-Brexit world that it's even more important

that we focus on some of these sectors.

And I remain fully confident of London's future and UK's future

in life sciences.

It's the innovation, the entrepreneurship,

that has kept London going.

There is political uncertainty.

But I think what we're seeing is that the interest of industry

coming to London and the greater south-east

is really borne out of the strength

of the scientific excellence and talent there is.

And that definitely is not changing.

UK-based biotech companies attracted £2.2bn of investment

in 2018, almost twice what they managed in 2017.

In the same year, foreign direct investment in UK life sciences

more generally reached £1.1bn, the highest it's been

in the past eight years.

But there are warnings from some of Britain's top research

institutions.

The scientific excellence that's so attractive for investors

could be under threat.

The Francis Crick Institute is Britain's biggest bioscience

lab.

It has 1,200 staff.

And scientists here come from over 70 countries.

We couldn't really be closer to continental Europe

than the Crick.

What does that mean to you, personally?

I suppose personally, being a French citizen,

I can jump in the Eurostar in 10 minutes,

and I'm in the train two and a half hours,

I'm in central Paris.

So it allows us to really get people from France,

but also close by Belgium, Netherlands now, and Germany.

Seventy per cent of my lab are non-British.

But in general, I think the proportion

in the whole institution is probably more than 50

per cent and with a high majority of EU

citizenship from laboratory support technicians

to group leaders.

What about international funding, particularly EU

funding?

What would happen if we were cut off from that?

In 2018, I think the institute altogether

get 12m euros from the EU or its own framework.

If the funding becomes UK national only,

that will restrict our ability to expand our work.

The UK's annual share of EU research funding

has fallen by almost a third, or 400m euros since 2015.

And there's been an almost 40 per cent drop

in British applications to one of Europe's biggest funding

schemes, Horizon 2020.

Many researchers feel the prospect of Brexit

is already having an impact on their work.

Ana, we don't know what's going to happen with Brexit.

No.

But what are the effects that you're

afraid of if it goes badly?

The main problem, at least for my work, is regulations.

We don't know what's going to happen.

But in the event of a hard Brexit,

where there is no agreement between the rest of Europe

and the UK, if I'm trying to run a multinational trial,

for example, how can I do it if there is no agreement in that

for sharing?

How can I develop a medical device

within the UK regulations if I don't

know that Europe will accept the UK regulations and vice-versa?

Changes to regulation could be particularly problematic

for fields like cell and gene therapy,

where scientists use the patient's own cells

to develop a living treatment just for them.

To give an idea of how rigorous the process is,

we filmed in Stevenage, some 30 miles north of London,

at the manufacturing centre of the Cell and Gene Therapy

Catapult.

The cells arrive at the centre by special courier and are

signed off before they can be taken inside.

Once logged, they're cross-checked before

the package can even be opened.

More paperwork before they can be transferred to cryostorage.

They're signed out and checked again

before being taken into the lab.

Nothing gets in without being cleaned and prepped.

Only now can the scientists get to work.

In real time, this whole sequence of events

takes place over days or weeks.