Innovative technologies: Nucleic acid medicines manufacture Rd 2

Key Features

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £5 million for manufacturing innovation for nucleic acid medicines. This funding is from Innovate UK.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £5 million

Opens: 5th Jun 2023

Closes: 19th Jul 2023

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £5 million in innovation projects.

These will be to develop and commercialise innovative solutions for the manufacturing of nucleic acid medicines.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to improve the resource efficiency, productivity and scalability for the manufacture of nucleic acid medicines in the UK.

Our objective is to stimulate the development and implementation of innovative technologies to improve the resource efficiency, productivity and ability to manufacture nucleic acid medicine. This must allow for growth at scale including, but not limited to, emerging products targeting large patient populations.

Your project must be focused on the manufacturing of the active nucleic acid medicines, either the ingredients or formulated products. You must be able to demonstrate an improvement in resource efficiency, productivity or throughput as compared with current manufacturing technology, utilising a recognised metric, for example, with process mass intensity.

The nucleic acid medicines in scope for this competition include but are not limited to:

  • small activating ribonucleic acid (RNA)
  • messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), including self-amplifying mRNA
  • antisense RNA or oligonucleotides
  • small interfering, short interfering or silencing RNA
  • short hairpin RNA
  • micro RNA
  • DNA

Specific Themes

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

  • in-process monitoring, control and release testing
  • maintenance of product critical quality parameters such as purity, potency and viability
  • novel analytical techniques for product characterisation
  • data acquisition and analysis for nucleic acid medicine manufacturing
  • process challenges for increasing the scale of production,
  • utilisation of alternative solvents for sustainable manufacturing
  • transfer of technology from small-scale manufacturing to a good manufacturing practice (GMP) manufacturing facility
  • lowering of the cost of goods as final output
  • increase in yield of active ingredient
  • increase in speed of production cycle
  • methods to increase the flexibility of established manufacturing facilities include analytical methods
  • innovative workflow to increase productivity and flexibility
  • adaptation of processes from batch to continuous production

Innovate UK will fund feasibility projects, industrial research projects and experimental development projects, as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Eligibility

Your project must:

  • have a grant funding request between £100,000 and £2 million
  • start by 1 December 2023
  • end by 30 November 2025
  • last between 12 and 24 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

To lead a project your organisation must:

  • be a UK registered business of any size, research organisation, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation
  • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
  • be or work with at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with 2 businesses (one SME, and one business of any size).

Academic institutions cannot lead.

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
  • public sector organisation
  • research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account, enter their own project costs and complete their own Project Impact questions into IFS.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

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

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. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A business of any size, research organisation, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If a business, research organisation, RTO, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

An academic organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

  • for medicines discovery
  • manufacturing process innovations using a non-human medicine as the product

Innovate UK 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

Funding Costs

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

  • for medicines discovery
  • manufacturing process innovations using a non-human medicine as the product

Innovate UK 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

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.