At a glittering awards dinner at the Hotel Intercontinental on Park Lane, the great and the good of Britain’s biotechnology industry were out in force. In ill-fitting dinner jackets, ponytailed professors rubbed shoulders with their university spin-out peers or sipped champagne with more conventionally dressed City bankers and lawyers. Amid the hubbub and the hors d’oeuvres, it would have been all to easy to believe that this was the annual highlight for a prosperous industry in rude health.
