Transforming Medicines Manufacturing – Grand Challenge (UK)

The aim of this competition is to encourage the development and adoption of flexible, agile, scalable and sustainable technologies (FASST) across the supply chain for the development and manufacture of medicines.

This Grand Challenge will establish a consortium to develop technologies that are expected to support enhanced manufacturing processes, with significant and measurable improvements to the speed and efficiency of pharmaceutical processes across the supply chain. This should lead to shorter development timelines, reduced time-to-market for new products and increase patient access to medicines.

Your proposal must deliver the following benefits:

• drive economic recovery and levelling up by supporting job creation, skills development, and inward investment in medicines manufacturing
• drive health security and patient benefit demonstrating improved productivity and reduced time to market
• de-risk the use of transformative flexible, agile, scalable and sustainable technologies in medicines manufacturing
• address net zero and sustainability goals showing how flexible, agile, scalable and sustainable can improve resource and energy efficiency
• support equality, diversity and inclusion via project initiatives and project outcomes

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• lowering manufacturing costs
• reducing environmental impact of medicines manufacturing
• increasing patient access to products
• increasing yield
• increasing productivity
• increasing speed of data processing
• improving efficiency and remove bottlenecks
• reducing time to market
• reducing development time
• supporting process monitoring controls
• gathering and effectively utilising information from across the supply chain
• commitment to skills and talent development

Project Size

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £2 million and £4 million.

Projects they will not fund

They cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project must:
  • be led by a research and technology organisation (RTO), public sector organisation
  • demonstrate co-investment of at least 100% of the total grant request
  • last between 24 months and 60 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • start by 1 April 2024
  • end by 31 March 2026
• To lead a project your organisation must:
  • be a research and technology organisation (RTO) or public sector organisation
  • collaborate with at least two UK registered businesses of any size
  • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
  • business of any size
  • academic institution
  • charity
  • not for profit
• Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project.
• Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
• Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
• You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
• You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
• A research and technology organisation (RTO), public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.
• An academic can collaborate on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.