Business Secretary Greg Clark today announced funding for a series of ambitious technology projects that will transform the way medicines are discovered, enabling the pharmaceutical industry to develop groundbreaking drugs faster, cheaper and better than ever before.
Our partnership in the institute gives us access to, and a leading role in, developing the step changing technologies that will revolutionise the way we do biology
Kathryn Lilley
The projects are the first wave of major initiatives for the £103m Rosalind Franklin Institute, that launched today at the Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire.
New drugs are discovered through a slow and painstaking process of trial and error, often taking ten years and billions of pounds to develop. The Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI) is investing £6m to create:
- The World’s most advanced real-time video camera, the key to a new technique that uses light and sound to eradicate some of the most lethal forms of cancer.
- A new project pioneering fully-automated hands-free molecular discovery to produce new drugs up to ten times faster and transform the UK’s pharmaceutical industry.
- A ground-breaking new UK facility that will revolutionise the way samples are produced and harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate new drugs for clinical testing within a few weeks.
The RFI will harness disruptive new technologies such as AI and robotics to dramatically improve our understanding of biology, leading to new diagnostics, new drugs, and new treatments for millions of patients Worldwide. It will pioneer new ways of working with industry, as part of the UK’s AI and Data Grand Challenge, bridging the gap between university research and pharmaceutical companies or small businesses. This will build on the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy and put the UK at the forefront of the industries of the future. Professor Ian Walmsey, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Innovation at the University of Oxford and Chair of the RFI’s Interim Board said:
“The RFI will pioneer disruptive technologies and new ways of working to revolutionise our understanding of biology, leading to new diagnostics, new drugs, and new treatments for millions of patients Worldwide. It will bring university researchers together with industry experts in one facility and embrace high-risk, adventurous research, that will transform the way we develop new medicines.”
The institute is an independent organisation funded by the UK government through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and operated by ten UK universities, including the University of Cambridge. Professor Kathryn Lilley from Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry is the RFI's programme lead in Biological Mass Spectrometry. She said that:
"The Rosalind Franklin Institute will offer a globally unique suite of technologies which will enable new understanding of biology, leading to new diagnostics, new drugs and new treatments," says Professor Lilley. "For Cambridge, our partnership in the institute gives us access to, and a leading role in, developing the step changing technologies that will revolutionise the way we do biology."