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The Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund will provide capital grants for businesses investing in the manufacture of human medicines (drug substance and drug product), medical diagnostics and MedTech products. This could include manufacturing investments in:

  • Curative and therapeutic treatments for both population-level and rare diseases (eg cell, gene, and nucleic acid therapies).
  • Earlier and better detection and diagnosis of disease (eg ‘breathalysers’ for the early detection of cancer or wearable continuous glucose monitors).
  • Smarter pacemakers, tricorders and robotic surgical devices.

The fund’s total budget is £60 million. The minimum total project cost is £12 million. There is no upper limit on total project cost or the level of grant that may be requested. However, the fund is designed to support a portfolio of investments rather than a single very large investment.

Projects can be for the upgrade, expansion or establishment of new manufacturing facilities and are likely to include both building infrastructure (eg air handling, the building), buying land and manufacturing equipment.

Manufacturers may apply for the fund if they are UK registered companies and wholly private sector businesses. Each project must be located in the UK and be a manufacturing project – this could be manufacturing product for clinical trials or for commercial sale.

The fund is particularly encouraging applications from companies ready to deploy their emerging technologies at scale in commercial manufacturing.

The fund will operate across two phases, with monthly deadlines to submit applications. The first deadline to apply is Thursday 31 March 2022.

Find out more here.