FAQs at the start

A number of questions cropped up at the end of the first session, most of which I have come across before, some thoughts to help you are given below. Please use the comments box or email to ask anything! The advantage of the Blog is that everyone can see the question and the answer.

My background isn't in Biology, will I be disadvantaged?

The majority of students are either studying a Biology or Chemistry based degree courses, and so even though there are students from other Faculty Departments in the class, it is highly unlikely that this will be a problem. On an individual basis, whilst some of the questions on the assessed "quiz" will be more familiar to Biology undergraduates, overall, the information required to pass the course well, will rely on your knowledge of the material provided on MOLE. The advantage of being part of a mixed group is the increased diversity in thinking: I imagine there will be a tendency to gravitate towards your interests, but try to stretch yourselves where possible.


I have an idea, but it is rather ambitious and would need a large investment, is this "allowed"? 

Your business proposal must be based on a piece of innovative Science. We recognise that do not expect you to  If you are thinking of developiyou are only half way through your degree, but we do want to encourage you to look further afield and to draw on your existing knowledge base to come up with ideas. If you decide you want to start a company for the development of a drug, for example a new class of antibiotics, you will need to consider the research and development lead time before a product emerges: in other words you will need to pay salaries and fund lab costs, for a few years, without any income. Such companies need substantial up-front investment: you therefore need not only to persuade your investor how promising your idea is, but also how you are going to protect their investment. You may think it preferable for an "organic" growth model: start small, build knowledge and then seek investment. Some students have thought of hybrid models: generate income via a related business to fund the more speculative ideas. Whatever your preferred model, try thinking through the number of staff you might need, the level of qualification  and experience (which will determine salaries). You might like to offer some employees stock options in return for reduced salaries. Think of the ideal location for material resources, human resources, distribution and labour costs etc.

If the business is "not for profit", more of a Social Enterprise, you may need to think about a low salary early phase, with recruitment of volunteers and a fund raising model that is more charity-like, or for grant support, or maybe crowd-funding? You can read about the top 10 crowd-funding resources here.

How "robust" should the Science be?

Finally, we come to robustness, and this is what we are looking for. We do not expect you to produce a fully fledged business plan, but the best ideas will be robust. This means that the financial model is appropriate, your infrastructure plans and recruitment strategy is evidence-based and that you have addressed and risk-assessed as much of your idea as possible.

Please keep the questions and comments coming!

FCP201-2016

Welcome to the start of Molecules to Market 2016: now in its eighth year, and facing similar challenges to any business: how can we retain its vibrancy, knowing that all successful businesses begin with enthusiasm, adapt and grow and then have to face the challenges of sustainability. In this blog post I shall introduce you to some of the issues that you will all face as you create your virtual business during this semester. I am going to begin with a short discussion on the origins of commerce, with examples drawn from the Chemical Industry, which "gave birth" to the Pharmaceutical Industry, which in turn co-exists alongside small start-up Biotech Businesses. [In the next Blog Post, I shall consider companies that have less of a focus on profit: the so-called "Social Enterprise" sector].

By the middle of the 19th Century, the Industrial Revolution was in is early "exponential" phase: wealthy, educated individuals were in a strong position: labour costs were low and the rapid growth of businesses required large scale migration of labour from Europe and Ireland [interesting parallels with events around the Southern European borders today?]. This was followed by a growing need for trained scientists and engineers. By 1870, all citizens in the UK were guaranteed a school education between the ages of 5 and 13. This was a key stage in the development of a technically based work-force required to meet the market demands for large scale production of chemicals, from salts, acids and alkalis, through dyes and plastics to the first synthetic drugs in the second half of the 20th Century.

How is this related to the course? In order to succeed in a sustainable way, any new business must incorporate a number of generic elements. And these haven't changed much at all over 500 years!

• A marketable idea for a product or a service

• A robust financial framework (understanding costs, expenses, margins)

• A mechanism for sales and marketing forecasting

• A management structure that incorporates human resource management (recruitment, reward etc)

• A technical group that develops the product or service, monitors competition and maintains a competitive edge 

• A legal resource: patenting versus "know-how", negotiation of "deals" and collaborations and, perhaps most importantly, for developing and obtaining an investment plan to fund key company milestones.

Some of these requirements can be met by the founders, but some will be obtained by out-sourcing. As a business develops, it may become sensible (economically or strategically) to bring some expertise in house at a later stage.

The early chemical companies in the UK, Germany and the USA started in the first half of the 19th century with the demand for products like salts, acids and alkalis created by food and textile businesses for example. And thereafter by other more sophisticated chemical industries; of course whilst the Pharmaceutical and construction industries drew increasingly on supplies of products from the chemical industries, the market for materials to support the development of ammunition has always been, and remains, buoyant! The early businesses operated with a handful of workers, growing to SMEs employing several hundred men by the late 19th Century. However, as demand increased alongside the greater expectations of purity and innovative products,  the need for mechanisation and increased production capacity required investment on a grand scale. Just like the need to develop the railway infrastructure, wealthy individuals alone were unable to raise the increased levels of investment, and so began the era of mergers and acquisitions and the development of stocks and shares and the commodity markets. Collaborations between SMEs in the North of England in particular led to the formation of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries), which by the 1970s (after over 100 years of business in the UK), was producing synthetic fibres for the textile industry, anaesthetics, dressings and drugs for the NHS and paints and fertilisers for domestic and industrial use. By 2000, ICI no longer existed! Some of the original business units are still around, following subsequent mergers and take-overs, Avecia, Astra-Zeneca, Syngenta. But the business models are quite different.

The second world war proved to be a key point for the development of the Pharmaceutical sector. Fleming's discovery of Penicillin, and its "Translation" by Florey and Chain, transformed the management of military and civilian casualties in this period and through the 1950s, with Pfizer and Merck emerging as Pharmaceutical giants. We should also remember the problems of drug discovery in the form of thalidomide and its catastrophic introduction for pain relief for pregnant mothers, in Europe in the early 1960s. It is also worth thinking about those companies who accepted the challenge of producing the contraceptive pill during this period: an enormous market, but huge potential legal risks. In fact these drugs were influential in the development of the FDA, in the USA, responsible for the regulatory protocols in ensuring new drugs were tested rigorously before being made available for prescription.



 
The breakthroughs in Molecular Cell Biology, starting in the 1970s with the advances in gene cloning and the subsequent work on cancer in the 1980s alongside immunology, has led to quite a different landscape to the one that prevsiled in the 1970s. The biggest selling drugs are now antibody based and whilst just as many individuals are buying paracetamol and aspirin, these drugs are off patent and retail over the counter for a few pence per tablet. Compare this with an annual cost of 10s of thousands of pounds for the latest anti-cancer drugs. These financial pressures are shaping the drug industry in some interesting ways. This is what we shall begin to explore over the coming weeks.

Why we should care about global demographics

There are a number of Institutions that keep a watchful eye on global trends. It might be climate change, pollution levels, sea levels, coastal erosion, financial markets, conflict risks or the changing population levels of bees, ash trees, tigers or humans. Organisations such as the CIA, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations, commission scientists, economists, psychologists, medics, mathematicians, engineers, sociologists, philosophers, linguists etc to provide their "take" on these matters. The reasons for this "surveillance" are manifold. Banks, investors, politicians and multinationals commission such reports in order to mitigate risks associated with their activities or to inform investment (and downsizing) decisions. So investment in a country like Libya (in the aftermath of conflict) may be regarded as high risk by some organisations (eg Pizza Hut), but may be attractive to others (eg Private Security firms); and moreover as the conflict subsides, major infrastructure companies such as Vinci from France will undoubtedly be "hovering". The decision to build more houses, schools or roads may be influenced in part by international population movements, or following an evaluation of annual birth rate data. If the number of children born in South Yorkshire in 2012 is significantly different than in 2010, the impact on income forecasts (and therefore teacher numbers) for a school can be critical and requires such regular surveillance.

The University of Sheffield is about to launch a project entitled 10¹⁰  that addresses these "high level" issues, by providing undergraduates at level 2, from any course, with the opportunity to form small interdisciplinary teams teams to simulate, evaluate and to develop ideas and solutions to solve the so called Grand Challenges of Society. The number reflects the predicted global population at the end of 2100 and the module aims to address the accompanying challenges that this will bring. This campus wide Achieve More Level 2 Module will shortly be made available as a pilot for volunteers in Semester Two of this (2015-2016) academic year. The structure of the module will be outlined at the dedicated "sign up" web site www.sheffield.ac.uk/10bn, which will become live after September 28th, 2015. [Contact details and institutional links are at the foot of this post, but will only come on stream for students in the New Year].

The Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology is delighted to offer the opportunity to its level 2 students to support the pilot scheme, and I am equally delighted to be the contact point for staff and students in the department. Why do I believe this is such an important opportunity? Well, first of all, since this post forms part of my Molecules to Market Blog site, where I comment on taking ideas in Biotechnology (broadly speaking) into the market place. I am sure you will agree that no matter how specialised a company may seem, its sustainability will be impacted on by the price of raw materials and/or the availability of manpower in some way. And, as I am sure you will be  already aware, an appreciation of the changing patterns of demographic trends is a critical aspect for sales and marketing, recruitment but perhaps more widely, and importantly, for global sustainability in general.

Uniquely, although I care about the species balance as a whole, it is homo sapiens alone that have the power to influence all other species and therefore we hold the key to global sustainability. (Of course, we could argue about this in the light of recent retroviral outbreaks, but for simplicity I hope you will allow me some " scientific" license!). I am also aware that the "companies" students construct as part of the various "Molecules to Market" levels, are not always profit making. For many "not-for-profit" organisations, global sustainability is embedded in their Business Planning.

With this said, what can students mid way through their undergraduate programmes in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Microbiology (and permutations thereof) bring to the 10¹⁰ Table? Here are some ideas, to begin with.

GM foods. An obvious starting point! Why not take a look at the Golden Rice project. Have we moved on from the (in)famous Daily Mail "Frankenstein Food" debate? It would be interesting to use this module as an opportunity to revisit the issues and the recent advances in the Science. Is there a role here for  Synthetic Biology? It might also be worth considering polling your non-MBB colleagues on the course, to firm up your ideas and to explore the challenges facing the use of GM crops to address population growth demands and the provision of food in the face of geographical, economic, political, safety and ethical barriers.


Infectious diseases. The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa, the seemingly endless battle against Malaria, the concerns over antibiotic use and the apparent economic barriers to the development of drugs to combat diseases prevalent in the poorer nations of the world. As second year MBB students, what a great opportunity to harness your core module knowledge and place it in this global context.

Drinking water. When we in the UK experience a few hours with the mains supply turned off; or even longer when there is a contamination issue, we are on the phone to Ofwat. However, in global terms the challenge of providing a simple, inexpensive device to turn, what is often sewage into potable water could bring Biotechnology, Chemistry and Engineering together with Microbiology.

These are some quick ideas, framed in the context of Molecules to Market , but I would strongly you take a look at the Bill and Melinda Gates portal. The Blog site is a rich resource and shows just how influential the organisation has been and continues to be in tackling global sustainability through innovation. I am keen to here views from those other organisatioons that utilise the Molecules to Market concept: please comment freely. I would also send out an invitation for schools to use this Sheffield concept as a vehicle for outreach links. I am already talking with UTC colleagues at several locations to see if we can cascade down some of the undergraduate ideas when they begin to emerge early next year. I hope this has whetted your appetite! I am certainly looking forward to the forthcoming events.

LINKS AND FURTHER INFORMATION 

AML2 team members:

Sara Banning (Educational Developer), s.banning@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Megan Blake (Academic Lead), m.blake@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Alastair Buckley (Academic Lead), alastair.buckley@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Amanda Crawley Jackson (Academic Lead), a.j.jackson@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Roger Doonan (Academic Lead), r.doonan@sheffield.ac.uk

Fran Potgieter (Educational Developer), f.potgieter@sheffield.ac.uk

Juliet Storey (Lead Educational Developer) J.Storey@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Tom Webb (Academic Lead), t.j.webb@sheffield.ac.uk

AML2 Homepage:

www.sheffield.ac.uk/10bn (in development, registration live 28th Sept 2015)

Achieve More staff website (currently being updated), including information on strategic curriculum change: https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/strategic-curriculum-change/home