Government healthcare fund pays up
pharmafile | August 3, 2012 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | ABPI, MRC, SMEs, government
A £180 million government fund to help small businesses and academics come up with healthcare solutions has made its first payouts.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) and Technology Strategy Board’s Biomedical Catalyst fund was set up as part of the Strategy for Life Sciences launched by the prime minister last December.
The initial awards total £10m and will be spread among 14 universities and 18 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in a bid to help the UK life sciences sector grow.
The MRC’s £7.4m ‘confidence in concept’ awards offer universities grants of between £360,000 and £750,000 to help progress 150 promising pilot projects towards clinical testing.
The universities of Dundee – which in May received £14.4 million from pharma firms and the MRC to help its work on speeding up drug discovery – and Oxford got the most money.
The funding could be used to validate therapeutic targets and undertake the earliest stages of development of new treatments, the government suggests.
Meanwhile a raft of so-called ‘feasibility awards’ worth up to £150,000 each and totalling around £2.5m, have also been given to various small firms by the Technology Strategy Board.
This will enable them to carry out feasibility studies, evaluating the commercial potential of an early-stage scientific idea and constructing future development plans.
The pharma sector has welcomed the cash injection, praising it as evidence of the government’s interest in life sciences.
“The universities and SMEs granted funds today, along with those that will receive awards in future, are among our key allies and partners in developing the next generation of medicines,” said ABPI chief executive Stephen Whitehead.
“It is great to see this important source of government funding practically and speedily delivering for companies in our sector,” said BioIndustry Association chief executive Steve Bates.
“With luck, some of the next generation of UK biotech companies will be born as a result of the confidence in concept awards,” Bates added.
Universities and science minister David Willetts said the fund “will help bridge the so-called ‘valley of death’ that exists between when a bright new idea is developed in the laboratory and the point when a new drug or technology can be invested in by the market”.
One of the recipients, Summit Corporation chief executive Glyn Edwards, said: “This type of funding is really important for life sciences companies especially for early stage programmes.”
The process was ‘simple and quick’, he added.
Applications for larger translational projects, including some seeking to demonstrate clinical utility, are currently being looked at with more funding announced before the end of October.
Adam Hill
Related Content
Aspect Biosystems announces partnership with governments of Canada and British Columbia
Aspect Biosystems has announced that it has entered into an agreement with the governments of …
Summer COVID cases set to reach 2 million with 10 million isolating
Analysis from the Guardian has found that over two million people could contract COVID-19 this …
Over 600,000 positive COVID tests genomically sequenced in UK
The UK has genomically sequenced more than 600,000 positive COVID-19 test, it was announced on …
