Bringing the Benefits of Regenerative Medicine to the UK
12 Jan 2010
A healthier, happier, more active and productive population; less pressure on health and social care budgets; job, skill and wealth creation; dynamic and profitable new markets both at home and abroad – these could all be delivered by regenerative medicine (RM), an emerging but fast-moving field of healthcare with huge potential to transform lives for the better.
Enabling the UK to maximise these benefits is the fundamental objective of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative Medicine, based at Loughborough University and due to begin work in September 2010.
RM covers a wide range of therapies designed to enable damaged, diseased or defective skin, bone and other tissue, and even perhaps organs, to work normally again. The new EPSRC Centre will build on previous, highly successful EPSRC-funded work in this inspiring branch of medicine. But it won’t just assist in identifying innovative therapies as Professor David Williams, who will lead the EPSRC Centre, explains:
“Without doubt, RM has massive potential – especially for tackling chronic, debilitating conditions like heart disease and arthritis that will become increasingly prevalent due to our ageing population. Yet it’s not enough simply to come up with clever ideas for curing such conditions. It’s about translating ideas into safe, affordable, cost-effective treatments that combine life-changing impact for patients with maximum commercial value.”
So a key priority will be to pinpoint commercially robust practices and processes that can be introduced in critical areas such as product innovation/development, quality control, good manufacturing practice, negotiation of regulatory pathways and reimbursement of product developers. Achieving this will provide a springboard for the UK industry to secure a major share of the growing RM market and achieve sustainable global success.
Encouraging the take-up of RM therapies in the UK healthcare sector is another key goal, to be achieved by undertaking authoritative studies designed to influence healthcare policy. Other studies will identify ways of eliminating bottlenecks that now hamper the translation of promising ideas for RM treatments into final products suited to clinical use.
To deliver the EPSRC Centre’s far-reaching agenda, Loughborough University will work with the University of Nottingham, Keele University and 28 partners from industry and the public sector. But relationships will be built right across UK academia and industry, with SMEs prominent as well as major corporations. This is a genuinely UK-wide initiative – but with a truly global outlook.
The first benefits could start to be realised very quickly, especially in the sphere of improved product development and better manufacturing processes. As for the health benefits enjoyed by individual patients, improved wellbeing and enhanced quality of life directly resulting from the EPSRC Centre’s work could start to become a reality within a decade.
“Ultimately, the key to the success of the UK’s RM industry will be its ability to address the right problem at the right time in the right way,” says Professor Williams. “Our EPSRC Centre will provide the capacity and the specialised expertise necessary to make this possible – and to enable the industry to build on its successes to date and fulfil its significant potential.”
For more information contact: Hannah Baldwin, Marketing and Communications, Loughborough University. E-mail: H.E.Baldwin@lboro.ac.uk, Tel: 01509 222239
