A new £20m programme to create four new Centres of Excellence for Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSIs), with each funded for up to five years, is set to strengthen the UK’s capability and agility in regulatory science and help ensure regulation keeps pace with rapid advances in healthcare and life sciences.
Developed through a partnership between the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Office for Life Sciences (OLS), the funding opportunity, launched today (22 September), is inviting applications to establish the four centres.
The CERSIs will bring together world-leading expertise from across academia, industry, healthcare and regulation to develop practical solutions to emerging regulatory challenges and help ensure new innovations can be safely adopted in practice.
Following extensive engagement across the sector, four strategic areas have been identified where regulatory science capability is required to support the next generation of healthcare innovation:
Data driven approaches and artificial intelligence
Prevention, early detection and novel evidence approaches
Personalised healthcare and pharmacogenomics
Novel platform technologies
As healthcare innovation continues to advance, regulatory science plays an increasingly important role so that new technologies can be evaluated, regulated and translated into patient benefit.
Through the new programme, CERSIs will help develop the evidence, expertise and methods needed to support regulatory preparedness for emerging technologies and address complex challenges across the health and life sciences system.
MHRA Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, Professor Jacob George, said:
The biggest challenges facing healthcare innovation can’t be solved by any one organisation alone.
These centres of excellence in regulatory science will bring together the right expertise from across the system to help us address emerging challenges in regulation, keep pace with advances in science and technology, and ultimately help patients benefit from new innovations more quickly and safely.
The programme also supports the UK’s wider life sciences ambitions by helping to strengthen the expertise and partnerships needed to maintain the UK’s position as a leading destination for scientific research, innovation and investment.
MRC Executive Chair, Professor Patrick Chinnery, said:
Advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, personalised healthcare and novel technologies are creating exciting opportunities to improve people’s lives.
Through this partnership with the MHRA and Office for Life Sciences, we are inviting applications that bring together researchers, regulators and innovators to help ensure regulation keeps pace with innovation to deliver benefits for patients, strengthen the health system and support the UK’s world-leading life sciences sector.
OLS Executive Chair, Steve Bates, said:
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