UK's Regenerative Medicine Sector Gets a Boost

UK regenerative medicine companies are being offered the opportunity to compete for an investment package designed to enable them to boost their productivity. The government-backed Technology Strategy Board has launched a £1.5m collaborative R&D competition call, setting businesses the challenge of developing a better understanding of the best ways to make a profit from regenerative medicine.

Zahid Latif, Lead Technologist in Biosciences, Medicines and Healthcare for the Technology Strategy Board said:

“Regenerative medicine companies operate in an emerging business sector, in an international environment where delivery of regenerative medicine could take on a number of different guises as the products and services are developed. The number of UK companies working in this field has been growing since 2003 and we are a world leader in this area, with a strong academic science base and a supportive clinical and regulatory environment.”

“There has been much recent progress but if the UK is to fulfill its potential, there are a number of development challenges which need to be overcome to successfully commercialize promising discoveries,” he added.

The competition is designed to encourage businesses to explore where and how value is created in the regenerative medicine value chain and develop business models to enable them to best capture that value, for themselves and the UK economy as a whole.

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive nondepartmental public body, established by the government. Its role is to promote and support research into, and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business to increase economic growth and improve the quality of life. It is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). For more information visit www.innovateuk.org.