UK Government Pledges £1 Billion for Life Sciences Research. The support from the government and private investors has spiked for the UK life sciences industry. The government has taken crucial steps to safeguard the UK’s position as a global leader in life sciences, strengthening its standing in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical research. To learn more about the subject, the government pledges £1 billion for life sciences research, please keep reading the article.
UK Government Pledges £1 Billion for Life Sciences Research.
The UK Life Science Vision has established a 10-year approach for the sector to build on the successes of the COVID-19 reaction and speed up the delivery of breakthroughs to patients. The outstanding response of the UK’s world-class life sciences sector to COVID-19 will be used as a blueprint to quicken the delivery of life-changing breakthroughs to patients as part of the government’s new UK Life Sciences Vision as published on 7 July 2021.
The Vision defines 7 critical healthcare missions that the government, industry, the NHS, academia, and medical research charities will work together quickly to address, ranging from improving cancer treatment to tackling dementia. These missions will concentrate on preventing, diagnosing, monitoring, and treating the disease early, using innovative clinical trials to create breakthrough products and treatments swiftly to help save lives, and speeding up the creation and widespread use of new drugs, diagnostics, medical technology, and digital tools.
The healthcare missions set by the government are:
- Accelerating the pace of studies into novel dementia treatment
- Enabling early diagnosis and treatments, including immune therapies such as cancer vaccines
- Sustaining the UK’s position in vaccine discovery and development and manufacturing
- Treatment and prevention of cardiovascular diseases and its significant risk factors, including obesity
- Reducing mortality and morbidity from respiratory disease in the UK and globally
- Addressing the underlying biology of aging
- Increasing the understanding of mental health conditions, including work to redefine diseases and develop tools to address them
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, “The UK’s Francis Crick Institute is at the center of forging ground-breaking advances to beat diseases like cancer and dementia sooner, helping deliver major improvements to diagnosis and treatment as well as preventing infection in the first place. Thanks to £1 billion in new funding, the Crick can go further to propel scientific discovery forward, harnessing British ingenuity, supporting new innovative companies to grow, and cementing the UK’s place as a science superpower.”
Professor John Iredale, MRC Executive Chair, said, “The Crick has been a flagship discovery biomedical science center since its formation in 2015. This funding from MRC, CRUK, and Wellcome will continue to support them in advancing their world-class biomedical research and solving scientific challenges. Since its founding, the Crick has already produced many important advances in human health and disease, spanning cancer, COVID-19, neurodegeneration, and embryo development, and we’re proud to continue supporting their ground-breaking research.”
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said, “The UK life sciences sector has been a beacon of hope over the past year and a half, developing diagnostics and life-saving vaccines at remarkable speed to secure our route out of the pandemic.” “This ambitious strategy sets out how we can replicate this same scientific excellence and agility to meet today’s greatest health challenges, doing with cancer, dementia, and obesity what we did with this virus—gaining the upper hand with brilliant science.” “Crucially, we’re going to build a pro-enterprise environment where our life sciences firms can access the finance to grow, are incentivized to onshore manufacturing, and can commercialize breakthrough products right here in the UK—rather than elsewhere—as we cement the UK’s position as a science superpower.”
Assurances given by the PM—Keir Stramer
Keir Starmer has promised a £1 billion investment in the life sciences field to improve the UK’s position in global health and innovation. The investment will concentrate on various key areas: advancing research and development via innovation, attracting global talent back to the UK, upgrading laboratories, research centers, and facilities to create state-of-the-art locations for scientific research, generating jobs in life sciences across the UK, and motivating cooperation and knowledge transfer between the government, universities, and private companies.
The Prime Minister has vowed to establish a substantial and robust healthcare system, targeting enhancing public health outcomes by boosting the UK’s biomanufacturing capabilities and creating medicines domestically. This could be seen as a significant move forward in changing the impacts of Brexit on research funding and collaboration.