He spoke to Central Lobby at the official opening of a new addition to the
Babrahamresearch campus, a hub of bioscience innovation at the heart of the Cambridge cluster.
“This morning I opened the Jonas Webb Building, a new building at the
Babraham Institute,” said Willetts, who has been Minister for Universities and Science since May 2010.
“It is a kind of incubator space for businesses that have spun off from the Babraham Institute or are relocating to the campus.
“It is part of the government’s capital injection into science and it was completed on time and on budget.”
The chemistry-focused Jonas Webb Building has around 1,500 sq ft of space, including 24 fume hoods, open plan bench space, offices and meeting rooms.
Half of the building has been leased by Cancer Research Technology Limited, the cancer-focused technology development and commercialisation arm of Cancer Research UK.
There are also many smaller bioscience innovation companies in the Jonas Webb building.
“This is the future of the British economy, and we have the great advantage of world class science,” Willetts told Central Lobby.
“We need to back curiosity-driven, blue skies research and then take those ideas and convert them into jobs and businesses.
“This is about taking ideas from the lab and converting them into products.”
Mr Willetts said one company on the campus has relocated from Australia to take advantage of both the research being done at Cambridge and the system of tax breaks.
He said it is “right” for government to fund research, as opposed to the market deciding the priorities for science.
“The market can do a lot, but the job of government is to fund the ‘upstream’ work, before a particular commercial application is clear.”
Willetts added:
“In the US, the National Institutes of Health fund products very close to market, and I think in the past in this country we have stopped funding too soon.
“What we do here with Technology Strategy Board is support projects closer to market.
“Companies have their role in commercial R & D, but we have been innovative in creating new extra ways of improving the link between research and business.”
Willetts points to the success of the Biomedical Catalyst Fund, which combined £90m of Medical Research Council with £90m from the Technology Strategy Board to support development “from the lab to commercial applications”.
The programme was developed in order to bridge a funding gap known as the "valley of death".
The term refers to the difficulties some early stage biotech and medtech companies have in obtaining enough finance to develop their research and development programmes to a stage where they can attract meaningful amounts of venture capital interest and/or license those programmes to a third party.
Willetts says that shared R & D, with a mix of private and public money, is “one of the best things to happen” in terms of sustaining the UK’s science base.
Although he used to be referred to by the nickname ‘Two Brains’, Willetts’ background is that of an Oxford PPE graduate, with stints at the Treasury and in the Number 10 Policy Unit.
He says he brings a different perspective to his role because he is not a scientist by training.
“I find it fascinating and the scientists are very tolerant. It is a challenge for them to explain what they are doing to a layman and I appreciate it.”