United Press is a UK biotech PR agency that helps life-science companies communicate with the accuracy and credibility the sector demands. In biotech, your audiences — investors, regulators, clinicians, potential partners and future hires — are sophisticated and sceptical. Coverage has to be precise, evidence-led and free of hype.
Why biotech communications are different
A single overstated claim can damage credibility with the FDA-literate readers you’re trying to reach, or invite regulatory scrutiny. Done well, though, earned media around a trial readout, a funding round, a publication or a partnership builds the trust that attracts capital and collaborators. In a field where progress is measured in milestones, PR is how you make each milestone count beyond your own channels.
The media that matters for UK biotech
Specialist outlets such as Endpoints News, Fierce Biotech, BioWorld and the news pages of scientific journals reach investors and industry decision-makers. The FT and broadsheet science desks reach a wider audience when your story has public significance. We help you pitch the right tier for each milestone — technical trade for a data readout, national press for a breakthrough with human impact.
How we approach biotech PR
We work closely with your scientific and regulatory teams so every statement is defensible. We build communications around genuine milestones — preclinical and clinical results, financings, IP, and partnerships — and prepare spokespeople to speak clearly to both specialist and general audiences. No guarantees of coverage, and never a claim your data can’t support: just rigorous, honest communications.
FAQ
Can you handle regulated, market-sensitive announcements? Yes. We’re experienced with the care these require and work within your legal and IR constraints.
Do you work with pre-clinical startups? Yes — early credibility with investors and partners often matters most at that stage.
Tell us where you are in your pipeline and we’ll map a realistic communications plan around your milestones.
Biotech PR from a UK base: what specialist reporters check before they answer you
Biotech is the hardest sector in British communications to bluff your way through. The reporters who matter hold science degrees, read primary literature and will ask which endpoint you powered for. Endpoints News, launched in 2016 by Arsalan Arif and John Carroll and now part of the Financial Times group, sets much of the daily agenda. Questex’s Fierce Biotech tracks pipeline and deal flow. BioWorld, published by Clarivate, has covered biopharma since 1990 with a data operation behind its reporting. Around those three sit the MHRA, the BioIndustry Association and a British investor base that reads all of them. A UK biotech story stands or falls on the evidence behind it, never on the adjectives in front of it.
Data first, narrative second
A specialist reporter’s opening question is what you measured, in how many patients, against what comparator. Give the endpoint, the cohort size, the control arm and whether the analysis was pre-specified. Hold any of it back and the pitch reads as concealment. Founders who lead with mission language and keep the numbers in reserve rarely hear from that desk twice.
Describe the regulator precisely
The MHRA authorises medicines in Britain, and a clinical trial authorisation is not a marketing licence. Since January 2024 the agency has operated an International Recognition Procedure drawing on seven overseas regulators, and the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway was relaunched in February 2025. Name the exact route you are on and the exact stage you have reached.
You are pitching an American clock
Endpoints News, Fierce Biotech and BioWorld all run largely on US hours, even though Endpoints sits inside the FT group and staffs reporters in London. Material issued at eight in the morning from Cambridge or Oxford reaches a New York desk before anyone is awake. Early afternoon in Britain puts you at the top of a working inbox instead.
Financings need their mechanics
Naming a round is not news. Name the lead investor, say whether the money is tranched, and state which readout it carries you to. British specifics carry weight here: Beauhurst records equity deals, the BioIndustry Association publishes sector financing analysis, and an AIM or Main Market listing brings disclosure duties that dictate what you may say and when.
The BIA is a working route
The BioIndustry Association has represented UK life sciences since 1989, and its committees, consultation responses and sector reporting are read by the journalists covering the industry. Contributing evidence, joining a working group or being quoted in association output places a founder inside the citation chain reporters already draw on. Slower than a pitch, and it lasts considerably longer.
Map what you cannot say
Journal embargoes, conference abstract rules and exchange disclosure duties cut across one another. A dataset promised to a reporter can breach a journal’s prior publication policy, and a listed company briefing a journalist ahead of a regulatory announcement has a far larger problem than a lost article. Work the constraints out before anybody drafts a release.
What biopharma desks actually run
Specialist biotech coverage is narrower than most founders expect. Nearly everything published falls into a handful of recurring story types, and identifying which one you have saves a fortnight of pitching the wrong reporter.
- Clinical readouts, from first-in-human safety through to pivotal results, written around the endpoint, the patient numbers and what the comparator arm did
- Financings, covering venture rounds, crossover investment, listings on Nasdaq or the London markets, and the runway a raise actually buys
- Regulatory events, taking in marketing authorisations, clinical holds, advisory committee outcomes, orphan and paediatric designations, and safety signals emerging after approval
- Licensing, option deals and acquisitions, reported through the upfront payment, the milestones, the territories retained and the royalty terms where disclosed
- Manufacturing and supply, taking in CDMO capacity, cell and gene therapy production, fill-finish bottlenecks and the plant investment behind them
- Corporate hard news such as leadership changes, redundancies, pipeline reprioritisation and closures, which these desks cover as diligently as successes
Five biotech pitches that get deleted unread
Each of these arrives weekly with genuinely good British science behind it. The science is not the problem. The framing is, and the framing is entirely fixable before anything leaves your outbox.
- Preclinical results dressed as clinical ones. Mouse data is mouse data. Borrowing human-trial vocabulary for it signals that you either miss the distinction or expect the reporter to miss it.
- No comparator anywhere in the release. A response rate alone means nothing without standard of care to read it against. Reporters will not do that arithmetic on your behalf, and most will not write to ask.
- A platform with no lead programme. Technology described in the abstract, with no indication, no candidate and no timeline, is a corporate brochure. These desks cover programmes that are moving.
- Loose regulatory verbs. Cleared, approved, authorised, designated and accepted for review carry five different meanings. Using the wrong one in a headline discounts the entire announcement.
- An embargo that collides with something else. Breaching a journal’s publication policy, or briefing ahead of a market announcement, costs a great deal more than the article you were chasing.
Not sure which of these applies to your story? Send it to ceo@unitedpress.uk and we will tell you straight.
Questions UK biotech founders put to us
Which outlets should a British biotech company prioritise?
Endpoints News, Fierce Biotech and BioWorld are the three that industry, investors and partners genuinely read, and coverage in them travels internationally. Add the City desks of the national papers when there is a listing, a large raise or a jobs story attached. Chasing consumer science coverage before any of that is usually effort spent in the wrong direction.
Do we need international coverage if we only operate in Britain?
Yes, because your counterparties do not read only British media. Licensing partners, US-based crossover investors, prospective non-executive directors and trial site investigators all follow the specialist trade press. A UK-only footprint is a fact about your operations, not about your audience, and the outlets that matter to a Cambridge company are largely the same ones that matter to a Boston one.
Should a funding round be announced before or after a data readout?
If the data is strong and imminent, holding the raise until afterwards gives you one substantial story instead of two thin ones. If the readout is months away, announce the round on its own and use it to establish the programme, the investors and the timeline that later coverage can hang on. What rarely works is announcing both in the same week and splitting attention.
Which UK sources do biotech journalists accept as evidence?
Companies House filings, Beauhurst equity records, BioIndustry Association sector analysis, MHRA public assessment reports, and trial registrations on ISRCTN or ClinicalTrials.gov all withstand checking. So does a named investigator willing to speak. Internal modelling, unaudited market sizing and consultancy forecasts you have paid for tend to be stripped out of copy before publication.
How far ahead of a readout should media work begin?
Start months before, and spend that time on groundwork rather than pitching. Briefing reporters on background about the disease area, the trial design and why the endpoint was chosen means that when results land they already understand the context. Cold-pitching a complex readout to a reporter who has never spoken to you is how good data ends up unreported.