Innovate UK
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£13 million to help transform 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, is pleased to announce the winners of a series of competitions focusing on:
- nucleic acid medicines
- intracellular drug delivery
- digitalisation and automation
The projects span the country from Cambridge to Redcar and 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.
Making better, faster vaccines
The project include using innovative technologies to create genetic building blocks and deliver medicines inside cells.
It also involves using digital and automated methods to make medicines faster.
All of this is done to make vaccines better and to speed up the production of medicines.
For example:
Nucleic acid: 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.
Intracellular drug delivery: Vitarka
Vitarka 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.
Digitalisation and automation: Microndesign
The Digital Lyo project 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
Exactmer
Area: nucleic acid.
The MELOS 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.
Vaxequity
Area: nucleic acid.
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.
BioToolomics
Area: nucleic acid.
This project will streamline production of mRNA medicines and vaccines, improving their quality and reducing waste, to make them easier and cheaper to manufacture.
Intellegens
Area: nucleic acid.
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.
Biologic
Area: nucleic acid.
This project complements BiologIC’s flexible RNA manufacturing platform with DeepMirror’s artificial intelligence algorithms to accelerate the development of novel RNA treatments.
Microndesign
Area: digitalisation and automation.
The Digital Lyo project will develop new methods for the optimisation of pharmaceutical freeze-drying processes in the manufacture of injectable drug products (medicines).
Autolomous
Area: digitalisation and automation.
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.
FourPlus
Area: digitalisation and automation.
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.
Rentschler
Area: digitalisation and automation.
Gene therapies hold promise for patients but have complex manufacturing processes.
This project implements process analytical technologies to increase efficiency, ultimately improving patient access.
Phion
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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.
Aqdot
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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
Microporetech
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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.
Sixfold
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
ENHANCE 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.
Cell Guidance Systems
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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.
Theragenix
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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.
Vitarka
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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.
RNAssist
Area: intracellular drug delivery.
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.
Original article link: https://www.ukri.org/news/13-million-to-help-transform-medicines-manufacturing/
