From big pharma to biotech; reflections on the UK life sciences industry amid British Science Week
Curve Perspectives article – Rab Prinjha
Rab Prinjha joined Curve Therapeutics in 2024 as Chief R&D Officer, after 25 years at GSK. In this Curve Perspectives article to mark British Science Week, Rab explains why he joined Curve, how Southampton is shaping up as a biotech hub, and the importance of collaboration in the UK life sciences sector.
Sometimes I’m asked why I left GSK, where I’d worked for over 25 years and rose to become Head of Immunology Research, to join a small Southampton biotech.
The short answer is: opportunity.
During my time at GSK, which I joined as a post-doc after training at Guy’s Hospital, UCL and King’s College London, I was fortunate to lead many brilliant programs, teams and units. I’m particularly proud of the progress we made in the Discovery Performance Unit (DPU), advancing immunology and oncology medicines to the clinic, and the talented people we helped develop there.
But, hugely rewarding as my career to date has been, too often I was frustrated after finding molecules that might bind to an exciting target, only to find they can’t block that target’s biological function.
Curve’s Microcycle® technology offers the opportunity of solving this very tricky problem, by identifying function-blocking hits using its unique disease-relevant, cell-based screening system. It’s an incredibly exciting prospect – which is already generating results.
Curve has talented people, innovative programs and – most importantly – the opportunity to apply this super-cool technology to discover medicines that really do work against disease-associated target proteins.
So as a lifelong lover of the focused application of science, this is one reason why I was drawn to Curve.
Another reason is that it’s based in Southampton, a lovely part of the country with a growing reputation in the life science sector.
Southampton might not have the same automatic association with biotech that Oxford or Cambridge enjoy. But there’s clearly so much talent here, and so many great ideas that are ripe for spinning out. Through the networks and channels we have, such as the BioIndustry Association (BIA), we need to shine a light on the remarkable potential of the technology being created here.
As we demonstrate success at Curve, showcasing it and other biotech companies thriving in the area, I believe we will garner more and more attention. I hope that, in time, this will become a virtuous cycle. The recent visit of the Rt Hon Caroline Nokes, MP for Romsey and Southampton, was a great step forward in highlighting the excellent innovation in this area. More generally, the UK government’s ongoing commitment to life sciences bodes well for the future.
This is what makes campaigns such as British Science Week so important: inspiring the next generation with the possibilities of science, strengthening ties and visibility within university environments, and opening up pathways for talented scientists to take up the mantle and contribute to the next wave of innovation, promoting partnerships and collaboration.
Throughout my career, I’ve been a resolute believer in choosing big important questions, questions that – by definition – demand collaboration across disciplines and entrepreneurial thinking to reach the right answers. Over many years my strategy has been to generate industry-leading molecules that can unravel novel biology by pursuing collaboration with pioneering academic labs. Fostering partnerships has been at the heart of my way of working: whether with the Broad Institute, EU-IMI, OpenTargets or the Structural Genomics Consortium. Indeed, with the generous support of the entrepreneur Jonathan Milner, this philosophy led Tony Kouzarides and several of us to found the now incredibly successful Milner Therapeutics Institute to pursue collaborative science.
