Collaboration funding
The UK’s Bioprocessing Research Industry Club (BRIC), a collaboration between two of the country’s research councils and the UK biopharmaceutical community, has awarded £3.5 million to fund projects at seven universities to develop new manufacturing techniques for biopharmaceuticals.
Biopharmaceuticals account for 30 per cent of drugs currently in development and 10 per cent of the current market. The projects funded by BRIC aim to improve the techniques and systems that underpin development and production of biopharmaceuticals.
These projects build on the first round of BRIC funding, which supported nine projects at ten universities with £5 million. The third and final call for BRIC funding will be announced in the next few weeks.
John Birch, Chairman of the BRIC steering group and Chief Scientific Officer at the biomanufacturing group Lonza Biologics, said, “The eight new projects funded by BRIC will make a significant contribution to the research underpinning bioprocessing and will help to provide both faster process development and more efficient manufacturing technology for new biopharmaceuticals”
BRIC was established in 2005 by to fund academic research in bioprocessing and is supported by 12 companies.
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