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10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 ■ TALENT ■ CULTURE PLACE ■ HISTORY ■ SUPPORT ■ OPEN/INDUSTRY ORIENTATION ■ GLOBAL LINKS ■ RESEARCH Why Manchester? Chart illustrates the factors that influenced F2G 39 The company has maintained and developed its international links, which it uses to partner with drug development and medicinal chemistry companies while maintaining and developing its scientific core expertise in house. In addition to supporting the company, these links have attracted one of the largest investments in the region for 2012, a $30m equity financing round in which two new investors (Advent Life Sciences and Novartis Bioventures) joined the existing syndicate of Sunstone Capital, Merifin Capital, K Nominees, and Astellas Venture Fund. F2G has an international board of directors and last year announced the appointment of a new CEO, Ian Nicholson, who has over 25 years of international experience in management within the life sciences sector. The investment will enable the compounds to go into the clinic and for the company to partner through phase three. Manchester has provided the company with a strong research base in fungal diseases; the first chairman of the school of biological sciences was a fungal microbiologist. It has strong local academic connections, including those with the University and the National Aspergillosis Centre at Wythenshawe Hospital. Links with the company are very beneficial to the University and there is great enthusiasm in the company for supporting these links for developing collaboration in what has been a neglected area of research. The University is now forming a new 'supergroup' of research expertise in mycology, a development which bodes well for the future and on which the interaction with the company has clearly had an influence. www.f2g.com