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Life Sciences & Healthcare

Discovery, innovation, market awareness and understanding are key to those life sciences and healthcare entities providing services and finance towards, and developing therapies and services for, the improvement of patient outcomes.

Due to the highly regulated nature of the industry, as an operator, investor, adviser, developer or licensee, you will be dealing with complex legal and regulatory requirements to launch, maintain and deliver your products and services to the market.

Our Life Sciences team is immersed in the sector and we appreciate our clients' technology; we are not just lawyers, we are immunologists, geneticists, chemists and engineers. With this background we are ideally placed to really understand your business, how it is changing and what you want from a trusted advisor. Highly relevant to this sector is our fully integrated European patent attorney practice. Spanning multiple disciplines, both legal and scientific, our lawyers and patent attorneys operate as one team with a common outlook and objective for our clients - providing pragmatic, innovative and effective advice, efficiently.

Our Healthcare team is truly immersed in the sector with over 25 years of advising and shaping the sector through in depth experience, knowledge and sector associations and collaborations. We have significant experience of working within the public and private sectors, giving us a complete perspective of the issues you face, allowing us to offer you commercial and well rounded advice.

With active memberships in major industry bodies such as the ABPI, ABHI, BIVDA, EUCOMED / MedTech Europe, Healthcare UK and the BPF, we help shape the legal and compliance frameworks impacting the life sciences and healthcare sectors.

As well as clients' significant, complex and strategic transactional, financing and structuring matters, we regularly advise on day-to-day business operations, covering areas such as public procurement, tax, competition, IP protection, exploitation and enforcement, product liability, supply chain, outsourcing and other commercial agreements and employment and pensions matters, as well as regulatory, disputes, risk and compliance advice. Truly a full service.

"Extensive pharmaceutical expertise with advice always provided in a business context. They understand our business and what we are trying to achieve with our IP strategy."

Legal 500, 2021

"CMS is one of the strongest city firms in this sector. They have real and deep rooted expertise. They deliver a Rolls-Royce service to some of the world’s most successful life sciences companies – many of whom they have deservedly achieved coveted “trusted adviser” status. They are one of the elite departments in this field. It is unsurprising that they have such a loyal client base."

Legal 500, 2021

"A one-stop-shop for us: its remarkable and successful mix of talent makes it stand out from the rest, and makes our lives much easier."

Chambers UK

"Extensive pharmaceutical expertise with advice always provided in a business context. They understand our business and what we are trying to achieve with our IP strategy."

Legal 500, 2021

"CMS is one of the strongest city firms in this sector. They have real and deep rooted expertise. They deliver a Rolls-Royce service to some of the world’s most successful life sciences companies – many of whom they have deservedly achieved coveted “trusted adviser” status. They are one of the elite departments in this field. It is unsurprising that they have such a loyal client base."

Legal 500, 2021

"A one-stop-shop for us: its remarkable and successful mix of talent makes it stand out from the rest, and makes our lives much easier."

Chambers UK

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Biotech
Recent years have seen an increase in the numbers of biotech IPOs and more investment in the sector, however it can still be challenging accessing the
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microscope looking at a slide
Devices & Diagnostics
In an increasingly competitive healthcare market, medical device and diagnostics companies need to ensure return on investment when developing innovat
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Laptop and stethoscope
eHealth
With technology and digital innovation at the forefront of many advancements in the lifesciences industry and in healthcare delivery, organisations lo
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Stethoscope lying on an ECG graph
Healthcare
We support clients across primary, acute, community, residential and social care including mental health, special education and children’s services. O
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scientist working with petri dishes
Life Sciences Disputes
Our Life Sciences disputes and investigations specialists advise clients across the breadth of the sector, including pharmaceutical, medical device an
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Various bottles of chemicals
Pharmaceuticals
With ever increasing costs of gaining marketing authorisations for new drugs, fewer opportunities for blockbuster products and ongoing pressure on pri
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equIP Life Sci­ences: from lab bench to busi­ness
High­lights of our ex­per­i­ence in Life Sci­ences & Health­care in the UK
Almir­all, S.A., on the trans­fer of its res­pir­at­ory fran­chise for an ini­tial con­sid­er­a­tion of USD 875m on com­ple­tion, and up to USD 1.22bn in de­vel­op­ment, launch and sales-re­lated mile­stone pay­ments.John­son...
Brochures
Law-Now: Lifes­ci­ences
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21/01/2022
Court rules op­er­a­tion of “VIP” pro­cure­ment lane un­law­ful but re­fuses de­clar­at­ory...
The most re­cent ju­di­cial re­view chal­lenge to be brought and heard against the Sec­ret­ary of State for Health and So­cial Care (the “SoS”), this time in the Tech­no­logy and Con­struc­tion Court, con­firms...
Law-Now Manufacturing
17/01/2022
CMS strengthens pat­ent lit­ig­a­tion of­fer­ing with part­ner hire
In­ter­na­tion­al law firm CMS is pleased to an­nounce the ap­point­ment of Toby Sears as a part­ner in its In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­erty (IP) prac­tice in Lon­don. Toby joins from Al­len & Overy. Toby’s ar­rival fol­lows...
News
10/01/2022
CMS Next
What’s next? In a world of ever-ac­cel­er­at­ing change, stay­ing ahead of the curve and know­ing what’s next for your busi­ness or sec­tor is es­sen­tial.At CMS, we see ourselves not only as your leg­al ad­visers but also as your busi­ness part­ners. We work to­geth­er with you to not only re­solve cur­rent is­sues but to an­ti­cip­ate fu­ture chal­lenges and in­nov­ate to meet them.With our latest pub­lic­a­tion, CMS Next, our ex­perts will reg­u­larly of­fer you in­sights in­to and fresh per­spect­ives on a range of is­sues that busi­nesses have to deal with – from ESG agen­das to re­struc­tur­ing after the pan­dem­ic or fa­cing the di­git­al trans­form­a­tion. We will also share with you more about the work that we are do­ing for our cli­ents, help­ing them in­nov­ate, grow and mit­ig­ate risk.To be able to provide you with the best sup­port, we im­merse ourselves in your world to un­der­stand your leg­al needs and chal­lenges. However, it is equally im­port­ant that you know who we are and how we can work with you. So, we in­vite you to meet our ex­perts and catch a glimpse of what is hap­pen­ing in­side CMS.En­joy read­ing this pub­lic­a­tion, which we will up­date reg­u­larly with new con­tent.CMS Ex­ec­ut­ive Team
Publication
06/01/2022
Pub­lic pro­cure­ment – new thresholds for 2022
The pub­lic pro­cure­ment thresholds have changed for the United King­dom (Eng­land and Wales, North­ern Ire­land and Scot­land), ef­fect­ive from 1 Janu­ary 2022.  These changes are com­mu­nic­ated in Pro­cure­ment...
Law-Now Brexit
04/01/2022
The UK Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity and In­vest­ment Act comes in­to force: a trans­form­at­ive...
The UK’s Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity and In­vest­ment Act 2021 (the Act) has at last come in­to force, her­ald­ing the biggest shake up of the UK’s na­tion­al se­cur­ity in­vest­ment screen­ing powers for 20 years. The...
Law-Now Manufacturing
23/12/2021
Post-Brexit pro­cure­ment re­forms to take shape in 2022
Earli­er this month, the Cab­in­et Of­fice pub­lished its plans for trans­form­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment rules post-Brexit. The plans in­volve in­tro­du­cing le­gis­la­tion next year to be ad­op­ted and im­ple­men­ted though...
Law-Now Brexit
06/12/2021
Brexit-re­lated, non-com­pli­ant .eu do­main names to be re­voked from 1 Janu­ary...
EUR­id has con­firmed that it will re­voke all Brexit-re­lated, non-com­pli­ant .eu do­main names on 1 Janu­ary 2022, with these do­main names be­ing sub­sequently re­leased in batches. If a re­gis­trant wishes to...
Law-Now Brexit
01/12/2021
A piece of pat­ent his­tory has been made con­cern­ing pat­entab­il­ity of com­puter...
In March 2021 the En­larged Board of Ap­peal of the European Pat­ent Of­fice answered ques­tions con­cern­ing pat­entab­il­ity of com­puter soft­ware sim­u­la­tions in case G1/19.  A Tech­nic­al Board of Ap­peal has now...
Law-Now Life Sciences & Healthcare
25/11/2021
The pre-ac­tion pro­to­cols are un­der scru­tiny, but is re­form needed for the...
The Civil Justice Coun­cil (CJC) has pub­lished its in­ter­im re­port on our cur­rent pre-ac­tion pro­to­cols (PAPs) and pos­sible im­prove­ments. There are nu­mer­ous PAPs gov­ern­ing pre-lit­ig­a­tion con­duct across a...
Law-Now Life Sciences & Healthcare
24/11/2021
On the Pulse
Wel­come to CMS ‘On the Pulse’ video/pod­cast series for all Life Sci­ences & Health­care pro­fes­sion­als – leg­al, com­pli­ance, reg­u­lat­ory
Publication
23/11/2021
De­ten­tion un­der the Men­tal Health Act – Friend or Foe?
The Care Qual­ity Com­mis­sion (‘CQC’) has re­por­ted that from the be­gin­ning of March 2020 to the end of April 2021, 556 people died whilst de­tained un­der the Men­tal Health Act (1983) (‘Act’), 383...
Law-Now Life Sciences & Healthcare
18/11/2021
Fu­ture Fund con­ver­sions
Data re­leased by the Brit­ish Busi­ness Bank show that the Fu­ture Fund provided a total of £1.14 bil­lion worth of Con­vert­ible Loan Agree­ments (“CLAs”) to 1,190 com­pan­ies who com­pleted their ap­plic­a­tions...
Law-Now FinTech
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