Fresh backing for the sector unlocked by the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund.
- 3 firms are investing over £80 million, bringing complete funding in UK life sciences to £600 million this yr and advancing the Government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan
- Investments throughout the UK, from Birmingham to Barnstaple, will ship vaccines and medicines for situations akin to most cancers and bipolar dysfunction
- New backing will bolster the nation’s provide of important medicines and guarantee dependable entry to the latest and greatest therapies, in addition to supporting extremely expert jobs
People throughout the UK residing with well being situations like bipolar dysfunction, most cancers and neurodegenerative situations will be given higher entry to important medicines, by way of greater than £80 million of funding into the UK’s world-leading life sciences sector.
These investments, introduced yesterday (Tuesday 14 April) by the Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, have been made attainable by the federal government’s Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) and will assist over 500 jobs. It takes the quantity invested thus far this yr in UK life sciences to £600 million.
This backing will strengthen regional clusters, create new profession alternatives throughout the nation and assist forge a new period for UK life sciences, which is on observe to be boosted by £1 billion by way of the Fund by the summer time.
The information follows finalisation earlier this month of a partnership which makes the UK the primary nation in the world to safe 0% tariffs on pharmaceutical exports to the US. The association makes future life sciences funding into the nation extra engaging, delivering on a key pillar of the Life Sciences Sector Plan as a part of the Modern Industrial Strategy.
The package deal contains a greater than £45 million funding from Accord – one of many largest suppliers of oncology and chemotherapy medicines in Europe. The funding in the corporate’s Barnstaple web site will increase native manufacturing of novel therapies, together with medicines for folks residing with bipolar dysfunction, alongside the location’s historic experience in generic medicines. This will safe the UK’s manufacturing and provide of medicines that make up 9% of all NHS prescriptions.
Accord’s newest funding represents a big increase for North Devon. The web site acts as one among Accord’s hubs for manufacturing, testing, and distribution throughout Europe, and is one among Barnstaple’s most necessary employers.
Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall yesterday mentioned:
By manufacturing extra medicines in this nation we will be sure that extra folks get the important therapies they want. These investments will make an actual distinction to folks throughout the nation and present our Life Sciences Sector Plan is bearing fruit.
We are delivering the superior therapies that sufferers want, rising our economic system, and creating and defending extremely expert jobs for folks throughout the UK.
Dr Zubir Ahmed, Health Innovation and Safety Minister, yesterday mentioned:
I’ve seen first-hand the distinction newest therapies could make to a affected person’s life. These investments imply extra folks residing with situations like bipolar dysfunction will profit from cutting-edge medicines – developed and manufactured proper right here in Britain.
This is the Life Sciences Sector Plan and 10 Year Health Plan in motion – giving confidence to medical innovators throughout the globe to ship, scale and develop in the UK, creating extremely expert, nicely paid jobs and strengthening our medical provide chains in the method.
Accord’s funding is among the many newest in a collection of personal investments to be unlocked by the authorities’s Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF), which is value as much as £520 million and is delivering in opposition to 1 of the 6 headline commitments inside the Life Sciences Sector Plan.
In a lift to the Midlands’ credentials as a life sciences powerhouse, the University of Birmingham’s Precision Health Technologies Accelerator (PHTA) will make investments £10 million in a programme to set up a new near-patient biomanufacturing facility. This will embrace 3 clear rooms and staffing devoted to producing medicines and vaccines for sufferers and scientific trials, giving the UK better flexibility to reply quickly to future well being emergencies.
The funding will even speed up the event of superior cell and gene therapies and mRNA vaccines, which is already nicely underway in Birmingham. Alongside University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, the University is main Europe’s first trial of a personalised mRNA vaccine for pancreatic most cancers – one of the crucial difficult forms of most cancers to deal with. In this ground-breaking trial, vaccines are tailor-made to every particular person affected person’s tumour, coaching their immune techniques to recognise and destroy any most cancers cells that stay after surgical procedure to stop recurrence. The new PHTA facility means the “tumour-to-vaccine” journey shall be sooner than ever earlier than, rushing up remedy time for sufferers.
Elsewhere, Codis has dedicated to investing in a new facility in Haverhill, Suffolk, utilizing superior spray-drying expertise to assist the event of next-generation therapies. This funding will assist tackle situations akin to most cancers and neurodegenerative ailments, whereas enabling companions to deliver extra medicines to market.
The Haverhill web site is the centre of excellence for Codis’ manufacturing of spray dried Sevelamer, used for the administration of hyperphosphatemia – notably necessary for sufferers with continual kidney illness, one of many UK’s most vital long run well being situations affecting 2% of adults aged 35 and over. With practically 3 many years of spray-drying experience, the group helps prospects throughout worldwide markets.
The funding will create 29 new jobs and safeguard an additional 160 roles, with the location benefiting from its proximity to Cambridge’s world main science neighborhood. It will even assist Codis’ continued place as a world chief, with Haverhill putting in the UK’s solely commercial-scale, solvent-capable GEA PSD 4 spray dryer. This superior expertise improves the bioavailability of difficult-to-manufacture medicines, serving to to extend accessibility for sufferers worldwide.
The new investments come alongside an impartial analysis by Ipsos confirming the sturdy affect of presidency funding in UK life sciences manufacturing. Evaluation of the Medicines and Diagnostics Manufacturing Transformation Fund and the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund. The tasks supported by the LSIMF and its predecessor fund (the Medicines and Diagnostics Manufacturing Transformation Fund) between 2021 and 2023 helped unlock £12 of personal funding for each £1 of grant funding. The report exhibits that authorities assist is taking part in a key function in conserving main manufacturing investments in the UK, supporting jobs and development, and serving to the nation put together for future well being emergencies.
Paul Tredwell, Chief Executive Officer, Accord yesterday mentioned:
The LSIMF grant has helped to unlock new funding in our Barnstaple web site which stays a strategic asset to the UK, offering 9% of all NHS medicines.
The funding will allow the manufacture of two new progressive medicines, serving to to safe the sustainability of the location and its broader contribution to UK well being resilience.
Professor Gino Martini, Chief Executive Officer, PHTA, yesterday mentioned:
The UK, and notably the West Midlands, urgently wants GMP cleanroom amenities to assist the manufacturing of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products and vaccines, together with cell therapies and mRNA vaccines, in addition to medicines for scientific trials. This new funding will enable us to realize our point-of-care manufacturing ambitions, making certain sufferers get entry to the most recent, most progressive medicines. Having these amenities in place will even construct resilience into the NHS, making certain future pandemic preparedness.
Professor Neil Hanley, Birmingham Health Partners Executive Director and Lead for Birmingham Health Innovation Campus yesterday mentioned:
This is super information that underpins the industry-facing power of well being and life sciences in Birmingham and the West Midlands. Through this award, we deliver to life the federal government precedence of near-patient biomanufacturing of cell, gene and vaccine therapies, all aligned to our super functionality in decentralised scientific trials. Delivering the federal government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan and the NHS 10-Year Plan is important. It is our obligation that Birmingham stays and grows as a vacation spot for this work.
Nicolas Fortin, Chief Executive Officer, Codis yesterday mentioned:
This milestone marks the subsequent section in Codis’ evolution as a worldwide chief in spray drying and ASD. The PSD4 considerably expands our ASD capability and provides prospects devoted business‑scale throughput to deliver extra life‑altering medicines to market. We are grateful for the assist of the UK authorities by way of the LSIMF, which allows us to speed up this venture and proceed investing at our Haverhill web site.
To additional strengthen life sciences funding in the UK, the federal government can also be saying a new Life Sciences Large Investment Portfolio.
Building on current funds like LSIMF, the scheme will work with massive firms ready to take a position over £250 million in life sciences tasks. Offering Trusted Trader standing, it will enable for streamlined functions for monetary assist, tailor-made regional and nationwide backing, and sustained engagement with UK Ministers. The regional assist package deal – initially piloted in Liverpool and Manchester – has already introduced collectively deep native data and the distinctive strengths of every metropolis, to indicate how better collaboration can appeal to new transformational investments to the North West and past.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, yesterday mentioned:
The Liverpool City Region is already one of many UK’s main clusters for progressive well being and life sciences. Being house to the world’s first devoted college of tropical medication, and now a Life Sciences Innovation Zone – which is ready to unlock as much as £800 million in public and personal funding and create 8,000 high-quality jobs – meaning that we are building on more than a century of expertise.
Being chosen to pilot the new Life Sciences Large Investment Portfolio is a robust endorsement of our strengths and functionality to ship transformational tasks at scale. It provides us the platform to go additional and sooner – attracting main world funding, accelerating cutting-edge analysis, and making certain that scientific breakthroughs translate into well-paid, excessive expert jobs and actual enhancements in folks’s lives.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham yesterday mentioned:
Greater Manchester has turn into the UK’s quickest rising economic system and we’ve attracted extra international direct funding than anyplace exterior London. Life sciences has been one of many key sectors behind that development, and in the previous yr alone we’ve seen firms like IQVIA, Convatec and Vortex Biotech establishing themselves right here.
We can provide entry to world-class analysis, innovation property and a talented workforce, all centred round our Oxford Road Corridor, and supported by a uniquely joined-up strategy between our universities, companies, public sector and the NHS. This pilot presents a serious alternative to construct on this success, by extra successfully speaking our provide to potential traders and working extra carefully with the Office for Life Sciences to draw main life sciences companies.
These bulletins observe a flurry of excellent news for Life Sciences investments in latest weeks. This contains information that Norgine will inject greater than £20 million to expand its site in Hengoed, Wales This will increase manufacturing for MOVICOL®, a laxative designated as a vital medication in the course of the pandemic. The funding will create 44 jobs and defend 112 extra at one of many firm’s fundamental amenities for producing gastrointestinal medication.
Norgine’s funding builds on the momentum of the rising life sciences sector in Wales, which generates greater than £3.5 billion in turnover yearly and employs over 13,000 folks throughout greater than 280 firms.
Saulo Martiniano, Chief Operating Officer, Norgine yesterday mentioned:
We are grateful to the UK authorities’s Office for Life Sciences for supporting this funding by way of the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund.
By increasing and enhancing our Hengoed amenities, we’re rising capability, strengthening high quality capabilities and investing in extra vitality environment friendly manufacturing, serving to to bolster the resilience of necessary medicines provided throughout the UK and Europe.
With these enhanced capabilities in Wales, alongside our web site in Dreux, France, and our community of producing companions throughout Europe, Norgine is nicely positioned to navigate uncertainty and ship medicines effectively and persistently for years to return.
Other investments introduced in latest weeks embrace:
- UCB committing £500 million to their new R&D and manufacturing hub for biologics in Surrey, supporting as much as 240 jobs
- An £11 million funding from Orchard, introduced throughout the prime minister’s go to to China and Japan in January.
The scheme additionally supported over £30 million of funding in 2025.
Notes to Editors
The Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) is a cornerstone of the federal government’s dedication to strengthening the UK’s well being sector and 1 of the 6 headline commitments inside the Life Sciences Sector Plan, a key pillar of the federal government’s Industrial Strategy.
The investments introduced yesterday are topic to closing settlement on phrases and situations.
Accord Healthcare is likely one of the largest suppliers of off-patent medicines with one of many largest manufacturing footprints in the UK. This funding is the corporate’s newest collaboration with authorities, including to their earlier £50 million funding which was supported by way of the federal government’s earlier Biomanufacturing Fund.
The Life Sciences Large Investment Portfolio (LSLIP) is a new flagship scheme and a dedication inside the Life Sciences Sector Plan. It is designed to leverage >£250 million funding portfolios into the UK.
DSIT media enquiries
Email [email protected]
Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 6pm 020 7215 3000