Douglas Hutchison FRSE FRCVS

I’m proud that CPI’s RNA Centre of Excellence in Darlington Science Park will host the UK RNA Biofoundry.   This £29.6m Government-backed facility will help fast-track advanced RNA therapies for diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and infectious illness, while strengthening the UK’s preparedness for future pandemics.    Hosting the biofoundry in Darlington validates the Tees Valley and wider North East as a powerhouse for advanced manufacturing and health innovation, reinforcing our region’s role in creating a modern industrial bioeconomy. This emerging cluster is already supporting highly skilled jobs, cutting-edge capabilities and global opportunities, building on our proud industrial heritage.   By giving UK innovators, especially SMEs and start-ups, access to specialist infrastructure and continuous manufacturing technologies, the biofoundry will help overcome scale-up barriers and bring new treatments to patients faster.   At CPI, we will continue to work closely with partners across government, industry and academia to build a resilient, sustainable and investable health-innovation ecosystem, one that ensures the UK maintains its global leadership in life sciences manufacturing.   Congratulations to everyone involved in bringing this vision to life.   Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/e2WwdA_i Stephen Kinnock Jane Wall High Value Manufacturing Catapult Tees Valley Combined Authority Darlington Borough Council National Horizons Centre NEPIC NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) BioIndustry Association (BIA) Arun Harish Brendan Fish Julie Anderson   #RNA #Healthcare #Innovation #AdvancedManufacturing #LetsInnovateTogether

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“By understanding how the immune system interacts with triple negative [breast cancer], we hope to find ways to treat the disease and hopefully cure it in the future.” Last month, we headed to the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute in Glasgow for a special research lab tour. Lucky attendees met with Breast Cancer Now funded researcher Professor Seth Coffelt and got the opportunity to take part in some hands-on science in the lab! Seth and his team are finding ways to train the immune system to recognise and destroy triple-negative breast cancer cells. They believe this research will provide vital information to improve treatments for people living with this aggressive and harder-to-treat form of breast cancer. https://lnkd.in/ebDCg_6h

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The weather followed my travels north this week to Alderley Park in Cheshire for BioCap 2025 hosted by Bionow and kindly invited to attend by Kadans Science Partner and Bevan McWilliam to talk about scaling Biotech in the UK. Two key ideas that I have been thinking about for a while continue to warrant discussion and policy implementation, that I think could transform UK life sciences. 1) Knowledge intensive SEIS - allow companies to raise £1m under the SEIS scheme and allow investors to deploy up to £500k a year under the same rules - Meaningfully increase the number of companies that can get their pre-seed rounds away quickly and promote private sector investment when DeepTech and Life Science companies are at their highest risk. 2) Create a Super R&D tax credit for companies completing IND/IDE work prior to clinical trial approval with appropriate private market capital - Targeting the sometimes 50% spend on regulatory hurdles that reduce the total equity requirement to get clinical data by half - Raising the net subsidy to 40% under the ERIS scheme would mean rather than requiring £20m to get clinical Phase IIa data you now might only need £5-£10m of private market capital. We heard from Tim Davis about all the work government and London Stock Exchange is doing at later stages to unlock pension capital and improve the UK public markets but without appropriate top of funnel support mechanisms there will be no clinical stage assets to back by the time this capital flows into the ecosystem.

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We’re pleased to announce NKF Innovation Fund has invested in BMI OrganBank, a medical device company pioneering next-generation organ preservation and assessment technologies. Through this investment, we’re working to accelerate a technology that aims to increase transplants, reduce non-use (discarded) kidneys and bring more lifesaving transplants to patients in need. https://lnkd.in/e6i8nMHj. @nkf @bmiorganbank

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"We aspire to move faster than other countries and really set the standards,” MHRA CEO Lawrence Tallon says in new interview with the Financial Times as he sets out his ambitions for the agency. By streamlining processes and removing duplicative work through schemes like International Recognition, the agency will spend more time on staking out a global lead in areas where the UK has "deep expertise", such as AI in healthcare, and cell and gene therapies. Read the full story: http://bit.ly/46kOF6u

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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the gravest public health threats confronting the world. AMR will cause 39 million deaths by 2050. This is a direct threat to the UK that demands urgent action, not short-sighted funding cuts. https://lnkd.in/e7e382wk

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In the first investment from the CGT Catapult as part of the Cross-Catapult Investment Pilot, Spliceor has received funding to accelerate the pre-clinical development of its trans-splicing #GeneTherapy platform for liver cancer. With support from Innovate UK, the investment pilot allows organisations in the Catapult Network to make seed investments into promising organisations within their respective industry. By enabling investment in early-stage companies, the pilot will help the CGT Catapult work with industry to ensure there is a strong pipeline of novel therapies in development. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e4h9xNkQ #AdvancedTherapies #Investment #CatapultNetwork

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📰 UK biotech NRG Therapeutics secured £50M ($67M) to bring its lead drug candidate for Parkinson’s and ALS, NRG-5051, into clinical trials by early 2026. 🤔 Why it matters: If successful, NRG’s approach could offer a novel way to slow or stop neurodegeneration by targeting mitochondrial dysfunction, an emerging focus in neuroscience. ⏳ Backstory: NRG was founded in 2018 by Neil Miller, Richard Rutter, and Grant Hawthorne. Despite the initial struggle to attract investors, the firm survived on grants from groups like Parkinson’s UK and the Michael J. Fox Foundation until it raised £16M in Series A in 2022. This £50M Series B was led by SV Health’s Dementia Discovery Fund, with backing from Merck KGaA and Novartis' venture arms. 🔎 Zoom in: NRG-5051 has a mechanism that blocks mPTP, a mitochondrial protein complex linked to cell death and shows potential to reduce brain inflammation and protect neurons. 🌎 Big picture: Mitochondria-targeting treatments are gaining traction in neurodegenerative disease R&D, with players like AbbVie (through its acquisition of Mitokinin in 2023) and Pretzel Therapeutics pursuing similar strategies. NRG could become a key player in this emerging field if its drug succeeds in the clinic. --- ✅ Do you want more biotech news like this in your inbox? Subscribe to Biotech Snap: https://lnkd.in/egnPG2cq

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