A new UK Catapult innovation centre focussed on medicines technologies, is to be set up on the life sciences park that is forming at AstraZeneca’s historic research base in Alderley Park near Manchester.
The Catapult will have £5 million in start-up cash for the first year.
At the same time, it was announced the headquarters of the precision medicine Catapult will be the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the biotech park to which AstraZeneca will relocate its R&D later this year.
The precision medicine Catapult will work on developing diagnostic tests to select the most appropriate treatment for individual patients. John McKinley, currently chairman and chief executive of Enigma Diagnostics, was named as chief executive of the Catapult.
Ruth McKernan, Head of Innovate UK, which manages the Catapult centres, said that along with the cell therapy Catapult, the precision medicines and medicines technologies Catapults, “Should keep the UK at the forefront of a sector [in which it has] long excelled, and act as a magnet for inward investment.”
The Catapult model
Catapult centres began in 2011 and are modelled on Germany’s Fraunhofer Institutes, which date back to 1948. There are now nine such centres across the UK. Alongside medicines technologies, cell therapy and precision medicine, the other six focus on:- High value manufacturing
- Offshore renewable energy
- Satellite applications
- Connected digital economy
- Future cities
- Transport systems
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