We’re excited to announce that the BioIndustry Association (BIA) have chosen us as their charity partner for 2024, and they will be supporting our strategic opportunities and fundraising activities over the next 12 months.
The partnership will be formally launched at the BIA’s Gala Dinner on Thursday, 25 January 2023.
Who are the BIA?
The BioIndustry Association (BIA) is the voice of the innovative life sciences and biotech industry, enabling and connecting the UK ecosystem so that businesses can start, grow and deliver world-changing innovation.
The benefits of partnering with the BIA
Together with the BIA, we want to see big progress made towards the first life-changing treatments to restore hearing and silence tinnitus. We hope to bring BIA members’ wealth of knowledge, expertise and experience to support our Hearing Therapeutics Initiative.
Great scientific progress is being made towards understanding various causes of hearing loss, and pioneering drugs and cell and gene therapies are already being developed. For example, BIA member Rinri Therapeutics is developing a stem cell treatment to repair the auditory nerve. Another example is a clinical study of Decibel Therapeutics’ DB-OTO gene therapy, which is currently underway in Cambridge.
During our partnership, we also hope to support BIA members in addressing workplace barriers for staff with hearing loss and make their workplaces more inclusive.
A pivotal time in global hearing research
Harriet Oppenheimer, Incoming Chief Executive at RNID, said:
“We are delighted to have been chosen as the BioIndustry Association’s charity partnership of the year for 2024. This partnership comes at a pivotal moment in global hearing loss research and will boost our efforts to accelerate the development and discovery of life-changing treatments for those who want them.
“Only 83p is spent per person affected by hearing loss on ‘ear’ research each year in the UK and when compared to other conditions, it is not very much at all. RNID, who are committed to support the 12 million people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, is the only charity dedicated to funding hearing research in the UK. As such, we are focussed on closing the gap and working with partners like the BioIndustry Association and its members, to increase awareness, interest and support of this emerging therapeutic area both now, and in the future.”
Steve Bates OBE, CEO of BIA, said:
“We are incredibly proud to partner with RNID, an organisation that shares our commitment to improving the lives of those affected by hearing loss.
“Health charities are a key component of the UK’s life science innovation ecosystem; their research is driven by patient insight and provides expertise that UK SMEs can learn from and partner with.
“This collaboration will play a crucial role in raising awareness about hearing diseases, fostering knowledge, and potentially leading to significant advancements in hearing research and understanding.
“I look forward to celebrating this partnership at our Gala Dinner in 2024 and identifying areas of opportunities for the charity with our membership.”