Life Sciences in the UK – An End of Year Update for 2024

Unsurprisingly, in light of the sector's value to the UK economy, promoting growth in Life Sciences has remained a key priority despite the change in Government. 

Indeed, Labour was keen to stress in its pre-election plan for the Life Sciences sector, titled 'A Prescription for Growth', that it was a previous Labour government that established the cross-departmental Office for Life Sciences in 2009, which forms part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. 

We previously discussed the last Government's 'Life Sci for Growth' fund and noted its intention to create a Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre for Excellence designed (among other things) to address the skills gap in this field.

October 2024 saw the establishment of The Resilience Centre of Excellence for UK Medicines Manufacturing Skills. 

Funded by the Office for Life Sciences, managed through Innovate UK, and delivered by its core partners – the University of Birmingham, University College London, Heriot-Watt University, Teesside University and Britest Limited – the Centre aims to bring together 'leading regional training providers to support the UK life sciences workforce by delivering high-quality training and outreach, spanning the entire careers pipeline for industry, academia, and the NHS'. 

For businesses looking to recruit employees with the skills needed to thrive in the Life Sciences sector, it will be interesting to observe the impact this coordinated approach to training has on those entering the jobs market in the coming years.

The year has also seen the announcement of some of the projects that will benefit from the funding promised in the 'National Vision for Engineering Biology'.   

In March 2024, UK Research and Innovation announced forty-eight successful engineering biology R&D projects, with funding totalling £13.5 million for studies into a wide range of topics including engineering red blood cells to unlock new therapeutic treatments, making a sustainable alternative to palm oil and engineering animal stem cells to cultivate meat production. 

The Government'sGovernment's investigation into how best to regulate digital mental health technologies – as led by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was planned from the outset as a multi-year project, which will continue through to 2026.  

Our blog in May 2024 covered the most substantial update on progress since the project commenced in 2023, but since then the MHRA has published a webinar (available as a recording on their website) on the topic of 'Clarifying DMHT Qualification as Software as Medical Device (SaMD)', and there have been further updates on the developing regulatory treatment of SaMDs more generally. 

Earlier this month, for example, the MHRA announced the first projects which will be trialled through its 'AI Airlock' project, a scheme designed 'to help test and improve the rules for AI-powered medical devices to ensure they reach patients quickly, safely and effectively'. 

These pilot projects are five AI-powered medical devices, including a tool designed to predict serious outcomes for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, another to improve the efficiency and accuracy of radiology reporting, and a 'large language model (LLM)'-based assistant to support clinical decision-making using guidance produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). 

The progress of the AI Airlock trials will be watched with interest by any life science business that might intend to capitalise on the power of AI in bringing future medical devices to market, as will the developing picture concerning the regulation of Digital Mental Health Technologies for those operating in that space.

It was also interesting to note that, although there is a long way to go with the three-year project for developing regulation of Digital Mental Health Technologies, this type of technology nevertheless made it into the MHRA's user-friendly annual update titled 'Medicines and medical devices: Six tips for staying healthy and safe this festive season', published on 11 December 2024. 

The MHRA noted in this regard that 'while there are some apps out there which many will find beneficial and helpful, not all of them have been created with input from healthcare professionals or those with lived experience of mental health' and took the opportunity to draw readers' attention to the fact that apps registered with the MHRA will be CE or UKCA marked. 

While this is, of course, true, for the individual wishing to use one of the many apps available over the festive period, having to find one which is UKCA- or CE-marked may, for the time being, tend to reduce their options significantly.