Alistair Houghton meets GEOFF WAINWRIGHT and RHYS ROBERTS, of 2Bio

THE science may be complicated, but this equation is simple – if hi-tech firms can’t get the labs they need, then they will move out of Liverpool.

It’s a fact that Geoff Wainwright and Rhys Roberts, directors of 2Bio, know only too well.

They operate Merseybio, the Liverpool incubation centre for life sciences firms – and they have seen several firms with great growth potential leave the city because there was no laboratory space available.

But now, for the first time in years, there is a light at the end of the biotech tunnel – the Biocampus.

The campus, part of the new £451m Royal Liverpool Hospital, will eventually house dozens of firms researching pioneering medical treatments.

Geoff and Rhys are working with the hospital and the university on plans for the first phase of the campus, a BioInnovation Centre (BIC) that will give space for growing firms – such as those that have outgrown Merseybio in recent years.

The more firms that move on to the BIC, the more will pass through Merseybio – and the more Geoff and Rhys can share their experience with.

As well as running Merseybio, 2Bio offers consultancy services around the world, helping researchers spin out their ideas into profitable businesses. They also share that advice, gained in years of experience in scientific research, with their local tenants.

Geoff said: “Part of the ethos is that this is not just a property.

“Diseases don’t have passports. They travel. Our market is global because the problem is global.”

Since Merseybio opened in 2004, thirty-nine companies have called it home. But, alarmingly, 16 companies have left the city because of a lack of space in which to expand.

Geoff said: “They were companies that just got too big.

“They had to make a decision – can they grow further in Liverpool? The answer for them was, unfortunately, no.”

Asked if the movement of companies was frustrating, Geoff said: “It has been for five years. We’ve been pretty much full since 2005.”

But the Biocampus will, they hope, change all that.

Geoff said: “The new hospital represents, for Liverpool, one of the biggest opportunities for forward- looking economic development in this part of the country that we’re ever going to get.

“The university and the hospital are bringing together a project, which essentially is one of these but bigger ” – he pointed at Merseybio – “to capture the value that we currently lose.

“As a company, 2Bio doesn’t lose that value. We still have contacts with these companies. But the city has lost valuable company stock that would have spent money and employed people in the city.”

Rhys studied at Edinburgh University, winning his PhD and studying cell biology at the university’s Roslin Institute – later well-known for creating Dolly the cloned sheep.

He then enjoyed a research career that saw him work in Australia, Canada, and the US – where he spent several years at a biotechnology firm in San Francisco.

“That really gave me an appetite for the commercial development of life science research,” he said.

In 2002, he was invited to join the young Merseybio in Liverpool.

Geoff, meanwhile, graduated with a PhD in biochemistry. His research focused on hormones in edible crabs.

“I was very well-fed doing my PhD,” he said.

After post-doctoral study and working for a contract research company in Cambridge, where clients included AstraZeneca and Unilever, Geoff joined the Merseybio project in 2001, just as it was getting off the ground.

Merseybio was founded by the University of Liverpool to house spin-out life sciences firms.

The university managed the centre until 2007, when Rhys and Geoff formed 2Bio to take over its management.

Rhys said: “Part of the responsibility we had was to continue our stewardship of the incubator, because it was something we had built up, operated and made successful since the start of the project.

“But we knew we wanted to internationalise the business. This gave us the freedom to do that.

“We now have more empathy with our customers than we’ve ever had. We’ve been there ourselves. We know what it is to take a risk, to start a new business and to grow a business.”

The original intention of the building, Rhys said, was to offer short tenancies so the centre could have a high turnover of businesses, regularly encouraging fledgling firms to move elsewhere in the city.

But the model has changed over the years, thanks to the lack of lab space elsewhere in the city.

Rhys said: “The problem is that, if companies reach the end of the short tenure but don’t have a suitable alternative, then you risk losing the economic value of that company.

“The model has morphed gradually from one that’s more supportive and empathetic to the needs of the companies, rather than slavishly adhering to strict turnover.”

Merseybio companies have worked in areas from making diagnostic tests for diseases faster and cheaper, to finding ways to make promising drug treatments more soluble and therefore easier to use.

The 2Bio team still works closely with the University of Liverpool, meaning they can dip into the pool of local research talent.

Geoff said: “Facilities such as this would be very difficult to replicate well if you didn’t have such a strong base around you.”

That research pool, along with the presence locally of companies such as Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers- Squibb, means Liverpool has a global reputation for life sciences.

Geoff said: “Liverpool has clear highlights when you go overseas in areas such as infectious diseases, materials chemistry, physics and pharmacology.

“People understand that we have a critical mass in a very small space.

“Shanghai has 14m people. Liverpool has just 450,000. But when we start to explain the density of high- quality activity we have in Liverpool, they immediately get it. It’s not a difficult sell and people are willing to listen.”

Life sciences firms bring more than just an economic benefit to the region. Rhys said: “While there are clear economic benefits to the Biocampus model, there’s a huge benefit for patient healthcare as well.

“Innovative treatments developed here for commercial reasons will also be available here first of all.” 2Bio helps researchers and companies to exploit their intellectual property.

It works with clients including universities, research institutions, investors and biotechnology companies large and small.

Rhys said: “What really motivates us, given our love of science, is the commercialisation of new ideas. It’s a very satisfying business for us.”

2Bio has customers around the world, particularly in Europe and in Singapore, Australia and Canada.

It acts as the “commercialisation partner” for a similar life sciences centre in Cantanhede, central Portugal, helping researchers there make money from their research.

Geoff said: “We constantly review whether we need to establish an overseas presence. It’s a big step for a small business.”

2Bio hopes to use its international connections to benefit Merseybio’s tenants and the city more generally. It is helping to forge links between the University of Liverpool and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and Rhys hopes other collaborations will follow.

Geoff and Rhys are clearly passionate about their work, and are enthusiastic about the prospects for the region’s life sciences sector.

They have left hands-on research behind for a new life as business gurus – but laugh when asked if they missed their labs.

“I was too dangerous in labs,” smiled Geoff. “There were a lot of explosions. It was time to get out.

“But we work with businesses all the time. And one thing we do really well is speak geek.

“There are so many times when we sit down with someone who is explaining something to us, and we see that it’s really cool.”

Rhys added: “We live vicariously through the experience of others whose experiments rarely fail.”