£13 million to help transform UK medicines manufacturing
Seventeen new projects will receive funding for cutting edge medicine manufacturing, delivered by the Innovate UK Transforming Medicine Manufacturing programme. Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, has announced the winners of a series of competitions focusing on:
- nucleic acid medicines manufacturing
- intracellular drug delivery
- digitalisation and automation.
The projects span across the country to address different challenges. These include innovative technologies for nucleic acid manufacturing and intracellular drug delivery to improve vaccines and therapeutics deployment while also implementing digital and automation technologies to accelerate medicines manufacturing.
£10 million from the Chancellor’s ‘Life Sci for Growth‘ package will help to bolster the UK’s health resilience.
For example:
Competition: innovative technologies for nucleic acid medicines manufacturing
Project title: manufacturing high purity mRNA at significantly reduced cost
Led by BioToolomics, this project will streamline production of mRNA medicines and vaccines, improving their quality and reducing waste, to make them easier and cheaper to manufacture.
Competition: innovative technologies for intracellular drug delivery
Project title: developing non-viral nanopore drug delivery technology for first-in-human trials
Vitarka Therapeutics is developing a delivery technology, EndoPore, that releases siRNA drugs inside cancer cells.
This award with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) will develop an efficient EndoPore manufacturing process.
Competition: digitalisation and automation of medicine research and development and manufacture
Project title: Digital_Lyo
This project, led by Micron Design, will develop new methods for the optimisation of pharmaceutical freeze-drying processes in the manufacture of injectable drug products (medicines).
This investment:
- provides the UK with a competitive advantage in medicines manufacturing
- maximises economic impact
- underpins healthcare resilience working towards the government’s Life Sciences Vision
Breadth of innovation and collaboration
Sarah Goulding, Executive Director, Healthy Living and Agriculture Domain at Innovate UK, said: “There is a real breadth of innovation and collaboration across businesses being funded through Innovate UK’s Transforming Medicines Manufacturing programme. This underscores our ambitious vision to de-risk technology, boost economic growth, build resilience into the UK healthcare ecosystem and ultimately to make the UK a centre of excellence in medicines manufacturing innovation.”
Driving forward digitalisation and automation technology
Mark Talford, Deputy Challenge Director, Medicines Manufacturing at Innovate UK, said: “This support for collaboration across the UK medicines manufacturing landscape to develop innovative nucleic acid medicines will drive forward digitalisation and automation technology. The team is really looking forward to working with the projects towards successful outcomes.”
Full list of projects
Competition: innovative technologies for nucleic acid medicines manufacturing
Project lead: Exactmer
This project will focus on a step change in the process efficiency and sustainability of the NanostarSieving platform for the synthesis of oligos on large-scale.
Project lead:VaxEquity
Quality, yield and cost optimisation of in vitro transcription reactions for saRNA-therapeutics.
A joint manufacturing-based project between CPI and VaxEquity to optimise and deliver efficiencies in the production of self-amplifying RNA for novel vaccines and therapeutics.
Project lead: BioToolomics
This project will streamline production of mRNA medicines and vaccines, improving their quality and reducing waste, to make them easier and cheaper to manufacture.
Project lead: Intellegens
Developing a novel machine learning-driven tool to advance oligonucleotide-therapeutic characterisation and manufacturing.
Intellegens and CPI are developing a gold standard software tool, including data and novel machine learning approaches, to advance oligonucleotide-therapeutic characterisation and manufacturing.
Project lead: BiologIC Technologies
This project complements BiologIC’s flexible RNA manufacturing platform with DeepMirror’s artificial intelligence algorithms to accelerate the development of novel RNA treatments.
Competition: digitalisation and automation of medicines research and development and manufacture
Project lead: Micron Design
The Digital Lyo project will develop new methods for the optimisation of pharmaceutical freeze-drying processes in the manufacture of injectable drug products (medicines).
Project lead: Autolomous
This project aims to improve cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing through automation or digitalisation, reducing costs of CGT products and increasing patient access to life-changing therapies.
Project lead: FourPlus Immersive
This project, led by FourPlus Immersive, with Holosphere and Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult will build a customisable, mixed reality platform that enables digitalisation and automation of training for medicines manufacturing.
Project lead: Rentschler ATMP
Gene therapies hold promise for patients but have complex manufacturing processes.
This project implements process analytical technologies to increase efficiency, ultimately improving patient access.
Competition: innovative technologies for intracellular drug delivery
Project lead: pHion Therapeutics
In collaboration with CPI and the University of Strathclyde, pHion Therapeutics will develop liquid and lyophilised formulations for its next generation peptide or mRNA vaccine platform.
Project lead: Aqdot
Aqdot, Centillion Technologies and the University of Nottingham will develop microBiofoundry-in-a-Box technology and supramolecular RNA-therapeutic-delivery systems for local, on-demand production of triple-negative breast cancer therapeutics
Project lead: Micropore Technologies
Micropore, Labman and CPI are pleased to be involved in ‘rapid development of intracellular drug delivery innovations’ using combined technologies to produce and analyse lipid nanoparticles.
Project lead: Sixfold Biosciences
This project will progress the development and manufacturing of Sixfold’s Mergo® formulations for the delivery of siRNA therapeutics to cells-of-interest, through economised, upscaled and high-throughput processes.
Project lead: Cell Guidance Systems
Improved methods for the intracellular delivery of nucleic acids are urgently needed to capitalise on the recent progress that has been made with RNA vaccines and therapies.
The technology we’re developing is exciting as it specifically targets the phagocytic immune cells which play a pivotal role in our bodies’ defences.
Project lead: Theragenix
Gene therapy in a powder aims to develop the world’s first dry powder gene therapy formulation for bone graft augmentation based on our proprietary technology platform.
Project lead: Vitarka Therapeutics
Vitarka is developing a delivery technology, EndoPore, that releases siRNA drugs inside cancer cells.
This award with CPI will develop an efficient EndoPore manufacturing process.
Project lead: RNAssist
The team will develop universal stabilisers to simplify and reduce the cost of manufacturing and delivery to the clinic of highly active mRNA medicines without freezers.
