Scotland

Scotland launched the latest version of its strategy to become one of world’s top locations for life sciences by 2020, as the hopes vested in two of its leading research companies Stem Cell Sciences and Ardana Biosciences, turned to dust.

Scotland is investing £9.5 million of public money in the Swedish stem cell company Cellartis AB to fund an R&D and manufacturing facility in Dundee.

A new centre is to develop clinical-grade embryonic stem cell lines to offer to companies and researchers free of intellectual property rights.

The Scottish Funding Council has put up £870,000 in an initiative to provide a single point of access for matching the know-how within the country's 20 universities and research institutions with the needs of small- and medium-sized enterprises.