Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF)

Wednesday, 2 March 2022 09:43

This fund is to support businesses investing in life sciences manufacturing projects in the UK Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund: scheme guidance Grant offer letter: draft template Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund: privacy notice Details The Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) is part of the Global Britain Investment Fund, of which £354 million will support life sciences manufacturing. The LSIMF will provide £60...Request free trial

This fund is to support businesses investing in life sciences manufacturing projects in the UK

Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund: scheme guidance

Grant offer letter: draft template

Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund: privacy notice

Details

The Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) is part of the Global Britain Investment Fund, of which £354 million will support life sciences manufacturing.

The LSIMF will provide £60 million in capital grants for investment in the manufacture of:

human medicines (drug substance and drug product)
medical diagnostics
MedTech products

We particularly encourage applications from companies ready to deploy their emerging technologies at scale in commercial manufacturing.

Eligibility

This is a summary of the minimum requirements for ‘in scope’ projects (read the scheme guidance for full details):

Your manufacturing investment must relate to the manufacture of:	Human medicines (this includes both the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) / drug substance and finished product / drug product). The fund is open to applications across the breadth of types of MHRA licenced medicines for human use, OR Diagnostics – for both disease identification and monitoring in human health, OR Medical devices – all types of medical devices related to human health
Your project must:	Be a manufacturing project: this could be manufacturing product for clinical trials or for commercial sale, AND Be located in the UK, AND Have a total investment value of more than £12 million
Your project can:	Be for the upgrade or expansion of an existing facility or the establishment of a new manufacturing facility

We will not accept applications that propose to manufacture:

veterinary medicines
herbal supplements and vitamins
input materials
consumables or equipment suppliers (for example vials, syringes)

Fund objectives

We will prioritise applicants based on their alignment to the fund’s objectives:

Creating economic opportunity through investments that will provide high-wage, high-skilled jobs.
Deploying cutting-edge innovations (at both pilot and commercial scale) which can be embedded in either the product itself or the manufacturing process.
Increasing health resilience, either through increased domestic capacity or by providing flexible capabilities that can be re-deployed in some way in a future health emergency.
Minimising impact on the environment, which might include reduction in input resources or using alternative input materials to become more sustainable or support the government’s net zero target.

How to apply

The assessment has 2 stages:

Stage 1: Expression of Interest (EOI)
Stage 2: Fund Application

We will use a rapid decision-making process to identify projects that align with the Fund’s objectives 2 to 4 using an EOI stage.

Projects that meet the requirements of the EOI will be invited to submit a Fund Application to determine the economic impact of the investment (objective 1) and test the project against standard requirements for grant funding.

Phase 1, Wave 1

Submit your expression of interest by Thursday 31 March 2022 at 12 noon.

We encourage you to apply early as the fund will close once all funding is allocated.

Applicants who apply in the first phase (March to May 2022) will be prioritised for due diligence if they will spend a substantial amount of the grant before March 2023.

Phases

The fund will be in 2 phases (March to May 2022 and September to November 2022), with monthly deadlines to submit EOIs.

Phase 1 closing dates:

Wave 1: Thursday 31 March 2022, 12pm (noon)
Wave 2: Friday 29 April 2022, 12pm (noon)
Wave 3: Tuesday 31 May 2022, 12pm (noon)

Phase 2 closing dates:

Wave 4: Friday 30 September 2022, 12pm (noon)
Wave 5: Monday 31 October 2022, 12pm (noon)
Wave 6: Wednesday 30 November 2022, 12pm (noon)

Specific themes

We particularly welcome applications from companies developing highly innovative products such as:

complex medicines such as advanced therapies and nucleic acid therapies, non-biological complex medicines and medicines that require complex delivery mechanisms
innovative medical technologies such as nanomedicine applications in imaging, sensing, diagnosis, and delivery through medical devices, 5G enabled devices, smarter pacemakers and 3D printed devices
diagnostics such as ‘breathalysers’ for the early detection of inflammatory and infectious diseases and ‘lab on a chip’

In addition, we particularly welcome applications that include the adoption of innovative process technologies, such as:

flexible manufacturing enabling product switching
scalable manufacturing
novel manufacturing processes
technologies that will minimise your impact on the environment
continuous manufacturing, both for commercial scale and clinical trials manufacturing
digital twins, which harness the power of data analytics and modelling to optimise manufacturing processes

Neither list is exhaustive.

Contact

Contact the LSIMF support team if you have a technical question about the application process: LSIMF@officeforlifesciences.gov.uk.