Surging nanomedicine investments improve global healthcare and pandemic protection

COVID-19’s outbreak has coincided with investments flooding into nanomedicine healthcare companies, according to the latest data.

Nano Magazine have highlighted a report by marketdataforecast.com that the global nanomedicine market worth $141.34 billion in 2020, will rise to $258.11bn by 2025.

The report also highlights a huge upsurge of investment support from governments and funds to develop nano therapies for vaccines, diagnostic imaging, regenerative medicine, and drug delivery following the impact of COVID-19.

Furthermore, nanomedicines offer huge advantages for wider healthcare also impacted by the pandemic and Long-COVID after-effects upon cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, immunological-related diseases.

This aligns with investment monitoring platform Pitchbook’s forecast that health tech investment overall will top $10 trillion by 2022 and that nanomedicine investment has grown the sector by 250% in the last five years.

Median nanotech healthcare deal sizes have also doubled since 2019, from £1 million to £2m in 2021, while the number of deals in 2020 was greater than ever, overtaking 100 deals in a single year for the first time.

Nanomedicine is transforming healthcare innovation and delivering early intervention and targeted drug delivery and testing

Investment is already aiding innovation as nanotech researchers and scientists work to improve biomedical devices such as prosthetics, provide new cancer treatments, and develop bone healing therapies, along with more innovations that could transform global healthcare.

Nanotech researchers have found nanobodies that block the COVID-19 and, potentially, other coronaviruses from entering cells and developed mask designs at nanoscale making them both cheaper and more effective.

The fast global response to the pandemic was also enabled by nanotechnology, being pivotal in Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccine development and Innova Medical Group’s 30-minute lateral flow COVID tests.

World Nano Foundation co-founder Paul Stannard said COVID-19 highlighted weaknesses in healthcare systems across the developed world, proving that long-term, innovative solutions are needed to enable change and prevent future pandemics, with nanomedicine playing an ever greater role in this transformation of global healthcare.

And while impressed by rising investments in and recognition for the nanotech sector, he warned against any let-up in this trend:

“Nanotechnology is not only crucial to our current healthcare systems, but researchers and scientists in this field are on the cusp of therapies, devices, and innovation that will revolutionise how we move forward.”

“To ensure pandemic preparedness, high-quality healthcare, and longevity, we must invest in nano healthtech and care innovations.”

His message was echoed by Kojo Annan (son of late and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan) who is a general partner in the Luxembourg-based Vector Innovation Fund, which recently launched a sub-fund raising an initial $300m for pandemic protection and preparedness.

Annan said: “A virtuous circle is developing between investment and healthtech.

“Lately, we have seen the development of multiple vaccines, acceleration of technologies linked to decoding the genome, the rise of nanomedicine and the use of artificial intelligence to monitor infectious diseases and new pathogens.

“More investment in sustainable healthtech funding can only accelerate this trend, bringing fairer and global distribution of healthcare, greater affordability, and preventive and early intervention healthcare, all ultimately improving the longevity of life.

“The pandemic has also transformed telemedicine investment and demonstrated that nanoscience and innovation could deliver more resilient societies and ecosystems for healthcare.”

Lessons of COVID-19 trigger radical 10-year Government plan to level up healthcare

·       Health plan will target smoking, obesity, food, clean air, and child health

·       Priority given to levelling up ‘postcode inequalities’ in healthcare

·       Technology-led investment will drive better diagnostics, early intervention and more de-centralised health system

A year of COVID-19 has exposed decades of travelling the tragically wrong path in UK healthcare according to a Government-backed ‘Levelling Up Health’ (LUH) presentation and report today.

Specialists drawn from healthcare, academia and industry heard how the pandemic may have caused 40,000 needless UK deaths, highlighted postcode-driven inequalities in healthcare, and confirmed the UK literally as ‘the sick man of Europe’.

It will now drive a radical shake-up with Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, Prof Chris Whitty, as a ‘health supremo’ overseeing all issues feeding into the nation’s well-being and longevity and reporting direct to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.

A 10-year Health Improvement Plan will target smoking, obesity, food, clean air, and child health and Prof Whitty said the NHS would also be re-shaped, within a 10-year plan for unified action across all functions including Whitehall: 

“No-one owns the whole problem and therefore we aim to bring these different government departments together in terms of resources and budgets.” 

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the LUH report had had been widely praised ahead of publication, and had prompted a re-focussing on the nation’s health and a goal to add five years to people’s longevity by 2035:

“80% of our budget goes on acute care, in other words patching people up, and we have to change this in one of the most important healthcare reforms for a generation.” 

Mr Hancock highlighted two main themes to this: Prof Whitty’s new remit and how “the NHS will benefit from this through reversing the silos that exist currently.”

He said Whitehall had to change too, as things like transport and air quality both impact on health, but relevant budgets are split between different government departments – Prof Whitty’s new role was to help bring these together.

Mr Hancock said: “This is a unique opportunity and there has never been a better time to do this following the huge learning from managing COVID-19, where we have broken these silos to create real impact and change and this has never been better illustrated than through the vaccine programme.”

He added that investment in technology and a healthcare model based on prevention, early detection and early intervention is key to the Government’s 10-year plan.

Mr Hancock also highlighted the importance of the Government’s data strategy, as identifying people’s genome is massively helping with diagnostics, and enabling much better health outcomes through use of AI and other early intervention measures.

The LUH report said its ‘Ten-Year Health Improvement Plan’, along with targeted funding for areas with poor health, would complement the Government’s post-COVID ‘Building Back Better’ blueprint for economic growth, improved health resilience, and reduced health inequalities:

“A healthier nation would be a great asset and a great investment. There would be public support for launching such an ambition,” said the report, underpinning this through stark facts and comment:

·       90% of those who died with COVID had significant prior poor health.

·       The most deprived places had much higher COVID deaths; 345 per 100,00 in Blackburn and Darwen - five times more than South Cambridgeshire (68 per 100,000) – and suggesting that 40,000 fewer people would have died if the whole nation’s healthcare had been ‘levelled up’.

·       The UK has the unhealthiest population in Europe: a significant drag on economic growth that also increases our exposure to future pandemics.

·       Health is the principal reason for 1.2 million people aged 50-64 being out of work, and people living in the most deprived places in England get significant long-term poor health conditions 19 years earlier than those in the least deprived ones, and they stop work earlier and die earlier.

·       Health inequality between the North and South costs £13 billion a year in lost productivity and 30% of the productivity gap between the North and the rest of England is due to ill-health.

·       Premature poor health increases demand on the NHS, for social care and welfare support; becoming healthier is fundamental to growth, resilience, and NHS sustainability.

Paul Stannard, co-founder of the not-for-profit World Nano Foundation attended the meeting and said: “I was pleased to hear Mr Hancock talk about early diagnosis and prevention being key, as many of the waiting lists are not for treatments but caused by delays in testing and diagnostics. It was also good to hear the Government’s commitment to diagnostic hubs and genomic sequencing.

“COVID-19 has been devastating but this is just the response needed to re-shape our healthcare system to be protected and prepared for the world’s next major health threat, while also transitioning to a more de-centralised, point-of-care, early intervention model benefitting from the latest healthcare technology.

“Rapid deployment of new vaccines and rapid mass testing devices show what can be achieved when the will and investment are fully behind healthcare.

“That’s why we have partnered with the Vector Innovation Fund to launch an initial $300 million international healthtech sub-fund for pandemic protection and preparedness that will have a wider impact on future healthcare provision.

“Investment in nanotechnology diagnostics, therapies, novel treatments, genome sequencing, and precision medicines is already helping the cause with record amounts of funding enabling healthtech advances in less than a year, which would have taken 10 years previously, along with delivering wearable health sensors, telemedicine, highly-targeted drugs and treatments, as well as breakthroughs in testing.”

‘COVID decade’ creates $10 trillion impact upon healthcare innovation investment

Healthcare technology investment in 2020 soared 47% to a new high of $51 billion and figures show it will rocket to even greater heights.

Overall healthcare investment is tipped to pass $10 trillion by 2022 on a 10-year upward trajectory, already being called the ‘COVID decade’ for investment into disruptive innovation supporting pandemic protection and preparedness.

The spin-off from this research is also creating opportunities to democratise and decentralise healthcare through early detection diagnostics and early intervention therapies, and precision medicine, all set to transform global health and human longevity.

A further sign of where new investment is going came with the recent launch of a $300 million Pandemic Protection Sub-fund by the Luxembourg-based Vector Innovation Fund (VIF) focusing on this ‘new age’ healthtech, and preparation for the next global healthcare challenge.

The new fund forms part of $17 billion (source: Pitchbook) in venture funding for healthcare innovation in recent years related to infectious diseases.

Scottish Health Innovations reports how accelerating investment has advanced the healthcare sector 10 years in just six months, through new data-driven technologies and digitisation, while vaccines have developed at unprecedented speed; the research and rollout for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines were the fastest in history.

Testing has improved too; lateral flow tests (LFTs) from the world’s largest manufacturer, Innova Medical, are now 99.9% accurate yet take just 30 minutes to show results and help identify new variants and isolate asymptomatic carriers.

Using cutting edge nanotechnology these LFTs have been adopted by a world class UK testing and vaccine regime, now including a new national health agency UKHSA to protect against future health threats.

But far more is needed to avoid repetition of COVID-19’s devastation: 2.74m deaths to date, $5.6 trillion in global GDP lost, plus severe financial, health, and social impacts - mental health problems, unemployment, and poverty have all soared, while many people with life-threatening diseases have gone undiagnosed.

And the world is still alarmingly unprepared for another pandemic. COVID-19 was transmitted from animals, and scientists now know that two new ‘zoonotic’ viruses have done this every year for the last century, yet the Royal Society of Chemistry claims only 10 of 220 viruses known to infect humans have antiviral drugs available to combat them.

Against such odds, says the Executive Chair of Scottish Health Innovations, Graham Watson, healthcare innovation, rapid development, and early adoption must become routine in what he calls an “optimal investment ecosystem”.

This had been lacking according to leading medical journal, The Lancet, which reported that a pre-COVID assessment exposed a need for faster medical manufacturing and distribution during a possible pandemic, and commented: "A true, end-to-end R&D ecosystem must deliver needed products to people as rapidly as possible, and at scale in a globally fair and equitable fashion.”

Paul Sheedy, co-founder of the not-for-profit World Nano Foundation, argued strongly against any easing of investment into nanomedicines, and nano diagnostics towards better healthcare and pandemic protection:

"Nanomedicine investment alone grew 250% in the last five years, according to Pitchbook, while equity funding to digital health companies hit an all-time high last year, reaching $26.5 billion, but it has to be maintained if we are to avoid the human and economic devastation of another COVID.”