The new UK Labour government is making one of its first major investments in the biopharma ecosystem, establishing 18 new clinical trial hubs in a joint industry collaboration worth up to £400 million ($527 million).
The new five-year pact, announced Wednesday by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, will potentially funnel hundreds of millions of dollars toward new clinical-stage drug development. The UK government said that about 75% of the newly-established Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicine Pricing, Access, and Growth will go toward clinical trials, aiming to boost the workforce and infrastructure necessary to run studies.
Another 20% of the funding will go toward domestic manufacturing enhancements, while the remaining 5% of the funding will target health tech updates, which would include “the rebuild of UK PharmaScan,” a database of medicines in the pharmaceutical pipeline. Central to this collaboration will be the sustenance of affordable medicines for England’s National Health Service (NHS), according to the government.
The UK’s Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said in a statement that the investment “will fast-track the next generation of treatments to NHS patients.”
The department is working in tandem with the ABPI, with CEO Richard Torbett saying in a statement that industry “has the potential to deliver so much more for the UK.” This investment, he says, is the government putting its money where its mouth is.
It’s been a rocky first two months between the new Labour government and the life science industry since the early July election, especially on issues impacting AstraZeneca. The UK’s largest company by market cap is reportedly threatening to move a vaccine manufacturing facility after the government considered reducing public funding for upgrades by more than half. The large pharma says it may move the facility to Philadelphia instead.
That looming decision follows discordance between AstraZeneca and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which declined to recommend the company’s Daiichi Sankyo-partnered breast cancer treatment Enhertu in late July. The group, charged with valuing new products entering the market, said that the companies declined to provide a new price for the HER2-low-targeting drug. AstraZeneca and Daiichi blamed the decision on how NICE classified the treatment.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the USD equivalent of £400 million.