About the Book
"An essential read for anyone committed to understanding the technologies that will define our future." CHRISTIAN ANGERMAYER, BIOTECH ENTREPRENEUR AND FOUNDER OF APEIRON INVESTMENT GROUP
Welcome to the biotech revolution
In the last century, technology has transformed the human experience across the world. This has been super-charged by the arrival of the internet, smart phones, AI and machine learning, and created trillion-plus dollar companies and household names like Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Our Future is Biotech explains why biotech is next: because our biggest remaining challenges as a species concern biological systems.
Biotech companies will solve our most intractable problems, from cancer, dementia, obesity and diabetes to elderly care, mental health conditions, and even clean power generation, agricultural production and environmental degradation.
Biotech means that we can all live better, safer, healthier, wealthier, happier, and longer lives.
The industry has already delivered "miracle cures" for several diseases, and there is more to come. But despite this, few people are aware of the phenomenal progress being made. Our Future is Biotech addresses this, explaining what biotech is, what is coming next, and how you might profit from it too.
Tech has been the most important theme for human progress for the last century. Biotech is next.
About the Author :
Andrew Craig is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and founder of personal finance business Plain English Finance with a mission "to improve the financial affairs of as many people as possible". His first book, How to Own the World, has been one of the top-selling personal finance books in the UK for several years, and currently enjoys thousands of positive reviews across Amazon, Audible and Goodreads.
Since founding Plain English Finance, Andrew has appeared in numerous national and specialist financial publications, been interviewed on Sky Television, Bloomberg and Shares Radio, and was featured in Michael Winterbottom's 2015 documentary-comedy The Emperor's New Clothes.
Andrew began his finance career at SBC Warburg in the late 1990s. Since then, he has held various senior equity roles at leading investment banks, both in London and New York. From January 2015 to June 2021, Andrew was a partner at an investment bank specializing in biotechnology and life sciences, WG Partners LLP.
Andrew lives in Hampshire, England, with his wife, Rachel, and their two small children, Ella and Oscar.
Review :
"Andrew presents an invigorating vision of biotech's profound impact on our lives, underpinned by a rich tapestry of scientific innovation and human progress. Our Future is Biotech is a clarion call to those mired in pessimism, offering an informed, optimistic outlook grounded in tangible advancements and potential. With its accessible narrative and compelling evidence, it not only educates but inspires readers to engage with the biotech revolution - both for personal empowerment and as savvy investors. As the book reveals the sector's capacity to reshape industries from healthcare to clean energy, it's an essential read for anyone committed to understanding the technologies that will define our future."
"A tour-de-force and a book that I found unputdownable. Andrew has seen the way for biotech and brings a unique, insightful and typically plain-English perspective to us all. This is a must read and highly recommended."
"An excellent analysis of the life-changing scientific developments occurring in the world right now and a good prod in the ribs to Governments and Regulators to improve the funding environment to ensure we all benefit!"
"Our Future Biotech serves as an essential guide through the transformative world of health technology. This book brilliantly maps out the intricate challenges and opportunities of the biotech sector in an era of extended life expectancy, increasing burden of chronic diseases, and widening health inequalities. With its thorough analysis and forward-looking solutions concerning new technologies, financial strategies, and healthcare reforms, it empowers readers to not only understand but also contribute to the evolution of healthcare. The inspiring 'The Future is Bright' chapter left me optimistic about our ability to harness innovation for better health outcomes. A must-read for anyone interested in the future of human health."
"Throughout our history, nature has sustained and nurtured humanity. In our complex modern world, more than ever before, we need to look again to nature to inspire and unlock innovative solutions and new technologies that can transform our way of life and protect and sustain the environment and biological support systems of our precious planet. As Andrew Craig so succinctly states in the title of his timely and erudite book: Our Future is Biotech. As a 'non-scientist', Andrew's grasp of the key concepts and complex fundamentals that underpin the application of biotechnology to solve problems in such diverse areas as human health, sustainable agriculture, waste management and clean energy production is extraordinary. He delivers a clear, comprehensive, accessible and unbiased view of the industry and its potential that is easily accessible to a wide readership. This is a must read for the shrewd investor with an eye to the significant opportunities emerging from the sustainable and life-changing new technologies emerging from this industry, but also for those more broadly interested in a guide to understanding biotechnology and its importance to the future of humanity and our planet."
"In a world of ever-greater complexity, biotechnology is at the forefront of the complex. From the medicines we take, to the medical devices that are implanted, to the myriad of apps directing our diet and exercise regimes. Every day we are impacted by the products of this 'biotech revolution'. Even those who specialise in biotechnology can struggle to keep up! Our Future is Biotech is an outstanding, easy to read, anatomy of the impacts that biotechnology will have on all of us, what we need to understand and what we might need to do about it. I urge anyone with an interest in the future to read it!"
"This is an important and extremely timely book which covers many key aspects of the biotech industry. Andrew provides excellent context for all readers no matter what level of knowledge and dives with appropriate depth into so many important areas of dramatic innovation. I thoroughly recommend this book as a clear guide for anyone interested in the sector and its impact on all of us, now and in the future."
"At bd-capital we look to invest in companies that are on trend with a unique point of difference. Biotech is a fertile hunting ground for our company, because there are large and growing unmet human needs, particularly as we all live longer. Andrew Craig's book places a good deal of emphasis on the crucial and poorly understood role of the microbiome in human health and in the inexorable rise of so many diseases of modernity, including IBS, IBD and a good deal else, which the evidence suggests may have much to do with a compromised microbiome. This is highly aligned with our stance and the reason our first portfolio investment was in the probiotics business, Symprove - a company Andrew holds in high regard. Ethical investing is at its best when good returns on capital, can be paired with making the world a better place. This is how we feel about our investment in Symprove and about the biotech sector more generally."
"Our Future is Biotech is one of the most positive accounts of the potential of biotechnology that I have read. It emphasises the important interaction between adequate funding for research and the potential benefits to human health, making the case that if there is adequate funding then nothing is beyond our abilities to improve our existence on planet earth."
"This is a must-read. In a world of volatility and short-term thinking, Andy looks at the longer term trends that matter and identifies how we should be taking advantage of them. He has a lovely way of writing - inciteful yet humble, knowledgeable yet open to new and fresh ideas and opportunities. I recommend Our Future is Biotech to anyone that wants to know more about the future and how we can all benefit from the greatest period of technological and scientific change in human history."
"Andrew Craig has shone a bright spotlight on the extraordinary opportunities that will be created by 'biotech' in the coming decades, how this is driven by the convergence and combination of numerous life science disciplines, and how it will ultimately provide the answers to most of the world's problems! Our Future is Biotech is an excellent and positive review of the exponential progress made in innovative life sciences over the past decades and the life changing potential it holds - on a timescale that's meaningful for all of us. A thorough, insightful and uplifting read."
"Andrew Craig's book is clear and direct. This is about why and how biotech is transforming health and delivering massive social, environmental and economic value - not just in impacting the major diseases that ruin and end lives prematurely such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and cancers, but also how biotech provides a key to developing more sustainable agriculture and environment. I was particularly struck by the section 'Biotech Miracles' that explains how biotech is providing the tools - drugs, diagnostics, devices and data/AI - to cure many diseases previously thought uncurable, to give hope in the fight against emerging health 'tsunamis' such as microbial resistance, and to extend old age and health in old age. Our Future is Biotech is about the cures, understanding, medicines, diagnostics and devices that allow us to live healthier, happier and longer lives in parallel with saving trillions of health dollars. It is a very cogent and well-argued case."
