GovWire

Innovate UK has up to 10 million to invest in projects that develop innovative manufacturing methods for producing medicines.

Funding is part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support leading-edge healthcare. This challenge will invest 181 million over 4 years to speed up patient access to new drugs and treatments. It should return 1 billion to the UK economy.

New approaches must deliver big improvements

The competition is seeking new approaches that can:

• improve commercially-viable manufacturing processes
• scale-up the production of new medicines through reliable and robust methods
• increase yield of active ingredient
• lower cost of production and goods

Medicines that are in scope are:

• advanced therapy medicinal products
• natural product medicines
• nucleic acid-based drugs
• prophylactic vaccines
• protein or peptide biopharmaceuticals
• small molecular weight pharmaceuticals
• virus and phage therapeutics

The competition will fund a variety of projects across different markets, technologies and medicines. These can include feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development.

Competition information

• the competition opens on 12 March 2018, and the deadline for applications is at midday on 9 April 2018
• projects must be led by a business and must include at least one SME
• we expect projects to have costs between 50,000 and 1.5 million and to last between 6 months and 30 months
• projects with costs below 100,000 can be led by an SME working on its own or with partners, while projects above 100,000 must be led by a business working with partners
• businesses can attract up to 70% of their project costs
• a briefing event will be held on 20 March 2018