£10m to fund new medicine manufacturing methods

Posted on 26 Feb 2018 by Jonny Williamson

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


Innovate UK has up to £10m to invest in projects that develop medicine manufacturing methods – image courtesy of Depositphotos.

The Funding is part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support leading-edge healthcare.

This challenge will invest £181m over 4 years to speed up patient access to new drugs and treatments; it should return £1bn to the UK economy.

The projects must be led by a business and must include at least one SME. Innovate UK expects projects to have costs between £50,000 and £1.5m 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.

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.

For more information, click here

Get insights like this delivered straight to your inbox

5 Digital Briefings | 5 Front-of-Mind Topics | 5 Days a Week

  • Monday: Manufacturing Innovation
  • Tuesday: Manufacturing Leadership
  • Wednesday: Digital Transformation
  • Thursday: Industrial Automation
  • Friday: Industrial Internet

Sign up for free here