£5M for public–private research partnerships in bioprocessing

Contracts awarded

Nine projects to develop improved techniques for faster and more efficient development and manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals were awarded a total of £5 million by the Bioprocessing Research Industry Club (BRIC).

Funding has been awarded to university scientists to investigate three main areas: alternative processes for the recovery and purification of biopharmaceutical products; bioprocess integration and intensification for biopharmaceutical manufacture; and quantification and characterisation of products and impurities in biopharmaceutical manufacture.

The universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Kent, Loughborough, Nottingham, Oxford, Warwick and Manchester will benefit from the awards.

BRIC is partnership between two UK research councils and the biopharmaceutical industry. It was set up in 2005 to fund UK academics to carry out research to underpin the rapidly growing field of biological medicines.

The aim is to both understand the bioscience underpinning bioprocessing and also to provide improved tools for bioprocessing and accelerate development in this field.

The nine projects are the third round of grants awarded by BRIC since it was launched and take the total value of research funded by the club to over £13 million. The projects funded from the first round of grants have now been running for two years and will soon be evaluated.

Celia Caulcott, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Director for Innovation and Skills, said, “BRIC is an open and transparent collaboration between publicly funded science and the biopharmaceutical industry and is very well placed to ensure that new and existing biopharmaceutical treatments are underpinned by excellent science.”