‘The Centre offers the pharma industry and other partners the opportunity to cooperate whilst enhancing the attractiveness of the UK for pharma manufacturing inward investment.’
A new Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre has been officially opened in Glasgow, Scotland. The £88 million facility brings together a range of expertise focused on developing solutions for some of the challenges faced in medicine development and production. Over the next five years the Centre is expected to generate some £200 million in advanced technologies and create more than 100 ‘high-value’ jobs. The Centre will also support the UK government’s Life Sciences Vision to speed up innovation and drive sustainable manufacturing processes.
The Centre is a collaborative effort and has six founding partners: AstraZeneca, GSK, CPI (Centre for Process Innovation), the University of Strathclyde and the UK government agencies UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Scottish Enterprise. There are now 24 partner organisations from the pharmaceutical sector, business, academia and government – these include Pfizer, Novartis, PwC, and Siemens.
The new facility will be able to take on many of the start-up risks involved in drug development, such as compliance and regulatory requirements for the development of new technologies. It will also serve as a hub to tackle what CPI calls the Grand Challenges, of which there are four. These include the digital grand challenge, and delivering automated just-in-time clinical supply while increasing speed, flexibility and efficiency in clinical trial drugs manufacture.
GSK’s Vice-President and Head of Internal Biopharm and Steriles Manufacturing, Andy Ross, said: ‘GSK has been very pleased to support the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre as a founding partner. The Centre offers the pharma industry and other partners the opportunity to cooperate whilst enhancing the attractiveness of the UK for pharma manufacturing inward investment.’
Nusrat Ghani, UK Government Minister for Industry and Investment Security added: ‘A strong life sciences sector, like ours here in the UK, requires full collaboration from all along the supply and delivery chain – from researchers and manufacturers to government policymakers and business. This was made evident during the pandemic, when the UK’s outstanding medical manufacturing capability gave us a global head start in rolling out timely vaccines.’
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