Establishing a UK Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre

The UK’s pharmaceutical sector is the sixth largest contributor to UK’s net export, contributing approximately £32.4 p.a. [3]. However, the sector's output dropped by an average of approximately 3.2% per year between 2008 and 2013 [4]. This decline has been partly attributed to reduced R&D investment and the lack of government investment in radical and disruptive manufacturing innovations. Despite the UK’s strong global position (3rd) in pharma R&D [11], it currently ranks 8th in pharma manufacturing, trailing the US, Japan, China, Germany, France, Brazil, and Italy [12]. The UK’s weakness in manufacturing innovation has led to it losing out to competing countries on the final manufacture of high value innovative pharma/fine chemical products, leading to increased UK imports of materials and finished products, reduced self-sufficiency, increased vulnerability to supply shortages, loss of high value jobs, and loss of manufacturing knowhow and skills [8]. As a measure to avert the above decline and to boost the competitiveness of the UK’s pharmaceutical sector, the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and University of Strathclyde are partnering with UK industry stakeholders and UK Government to create a state-of-the-art Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC), dedicated to accelerating the development and industrial adoption of transformative manufacturing innovations in small molecule pharmaceuticals (which make up the majority of medicines) and fine chemicals (of which >70% are consumed by the pharmaceutical industry).