MRC Funding Boosts UK’s Life Science Industry
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The Medical Research Council (MRC) has unveiled a new report that shows its funding schemes have helped boost the life sciences industry in the UK since 2008.
Its MRC Translational Research 2008-2018 Evaluation Report revealed that more than £530 million of financing has resulted in MRC-linked spinouts that have gone on to secure £1.1 billion in investment from the private sector. This has allowed the industry to create new therapies and produce medical devices that have helped the healthcare sector over the last ten years.
Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak, MRC’s Health Innovation Champion and vice principal and head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow, said: “The MRC has played a leading role in developing a continuum of funding to support UK life scientists take research from the laboratory and through the ‘valley of death’, so investors and funders can turn their brilliant ideas into health and economic benefits.”
She went on to say: “The MRC’s translational funding has the biggest impact in areas where we have created new markets in difficult or emerging areas of research, such as advanced therapies, like gene and cell therapies.”
The MRC’s funding schemes for translational research developed in response to the 2006 Cooksey review of UK health research funding, which found more research was required to launch products through the ‘valley of death’, with the majority of projects failing to progress from theory to practical application.
The recent report, which was commissioned by the MRC for UK Research and Innovation, looked at the outcomes of the translational research between 2008 and 2018.
Its findings revealed a third of projects that are financed through translational funding initiatives go on to gain further funding to help them progress.
The results also showed 134 spinouts – or between three and six per cent of all new life science businesses in Britain since 2008 – came from projects funded by the MRC, and 78 of these were from translational researching funding schemes.
Thirty-one of these spinouts managed to secure £1.1 billion in investment over the decade, representing 41 per cent of all funding given to UK life science industry start-ups since 2008.
Professor Dominiczak went on to say: “Through this evaluation, the MRC now has the evidence upon which to shape the case for, and design of, future funding mechanisms to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of this essential scientific discipline.”
An example of the impact of MRC’s translational funding can be seen with the development of a new gene therapy for adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA) severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). This rare immune disorder, which is often called ‘bubble boy disease’, means babies are born with virtually no immunity, so they are unable to fight off even the smallest infection.
The MRC provided £2.1 million in funding for work to improve the gene therapy, which has gone on to treat 20 patients during a clinical trial.
Indeed, The New England Journal of Medicine revealed the eight children involved in the study are now able to produce immune cells to help them combat everyday germs and infections.
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