Innovative drug development models awarded funding to drive adoption and growth
Following the government’s announcement today of a £22 million investment package to support alternatives to animal testing, Innovate UK is investing up to £2 million in nine innovative projects that will help accelerate the development and adoption of non-animal approaches for medicines development.
The announcement sits alongside a £20 million Medical Research Council (MRC) investment in a new Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub, demonstrating UKRI’s commitment to advancing human biology-based approaches across the research and innovation landscape.
The government’s Replacing Animals in Science Strategy heralds a reshaping of the UK landscape, laying a stronger foundation for the next generation of preclinical methodology and enabling a shift towards human-relevant technologically advanced approaches.
Our aim with this competition is to empower our most innovative organisations, particularly SMEs, to industrialise cutting edge science into the tools that modern drug development urgently needs, enabled by regulatory reform.
– Dr Sarah Goulding, Director of Life Sciences, Innovate UK
To translate this national ambition into real world capability, Innovate UK, working in partnership with the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), is funding nine projects developing technologies that can offer the accuracy, reproducibility and scalability required to transform the sector and fuel sustainable economic growth.
The funding forms part of a two-phase Contracts for Innovation competition designed to deliver the next generation of validated non-animal pharmacokinetic (PK) and cardiovascular safety assays, strengthening UK capability in a strategically important area of life sciences and positioning UK innovators to compete in a rapidly expanding global market.
We are delighted to be partnering with Innovate UK to deliver key commitments within the UK Alternatives Strategy, supporting the next generation of cardiovascular and pharmacokinetic assays and approaches. By accelerating the development, commercialisation and uptake of innovative human biology-based technologies, these projects will strengthen safety assessment in medicines development and replace the use of animals.
– Catherine Vickers, Head of Innovation, NC3Rs
Contracts for Innovation competitions help public sector organisations to solve complex challenges by running a competitive funding opportunity to develop and adopt new solutions and technologies.
This first phase is designed to generate early evidence, refine methods and demonstrate a credible pathway toward broader adoption. Phase 2 will support the most promising projects to move toward development and real world applicability.
From AI driven PK prediction to beating heart cells in a dish, organ on a chip technologies and platforms that integrate a range of these approaches, the funded projects have the opportunity to offer the accuracy, reproducibility and scalability required to transform the sector and fuel sustainable economic growth.
Alternative approaches to medicines development represent a major opportunity for UK innovation and economic growth. Through this investment, we are helping to build strategic UK capability in an area of increasing global demand, accelerating the translation of cutting-edge science into commercially viable products and services.
– Grace Ford, Lead for Medicines, Innovate UK
The UK government’s Modern Industrial Strategy and the Life Sciences Sector Plan highlight life sciences as a driver of national prosperity. Strengthening our preclinical infrastructure and capabilities is central to that ambition, ensuring that the UK remains a world class environment for developing the medicines of tomorrow.
Funded projects
-
Biofoundry’s platform will significantly reduce unethical utilisation of dogs; targeting government’s goal of >50% reduction in dedicated cardiovascular safety studies using dogs and NHPs.
LinkedIn
-
Developing a miniature model of living human heart tissue to show how new medicines affect heartbeat and pumping, improving safety testing and reducing animal use.
Website
-
Developing ear models designed to accelerate the advancement of therapies to improve hearing loss whilst reducing reliance on animal studies.
Website
-
Developing human-relevant models and simulations to predict how drugs behave in people, reducing animal testing, lowering costs, and improving confidence in safer, more effective medicines.
Website
-
Developing PKBridge, an AI platform that predicts how medicines move through the human body from laboratory data alone, replacing animal pharmacokinetic studies in drug development.
Website
-
A feasibility study to test the viability of replacing dog and monkey cardiovascular drug safety studies with a regulator approved non-animal alternative.
Website
-
Nanograb is building an AI platform that predicts LNP pharmacokinetics and biodistribution from formulation data, enabling safer, faster development while reducing reliance on dedicated non-human primate studies.
Website
-
Developing a statistical tool to assess laboratory data and simulation based predictions of pharmaceutical safety tests, building evidence for reduction and retirement of animal-based tests.
Website
-
A feasibility study using lab-grown human heart-like tissues to better predict drug side effects, ensuring reliable results, reducing animal testing, and improving patient safety.
Website
Programme
This article is part of Contracts for Innovation.
Enabling innovators to work directly with the public sector to develop new technologies and processes.