Round-up of KTN's Health Team's Success Stories from 2018

Posted on: 18/01/2019

KTN’s Health Team enjoyed a busy and fruitful 2018. Here we outline some of the team’s achievements this year.

 

Advanced Therapies Manufacturing Taskforce recipient of Richard Wilson Impact Award

The Advanced Therapies Manufacturing Taskforce (ATMT) won the Richard Wilson Impact Award at the bioProcessUK conference in Edinburgh in November 2018. The Award acknowledges those who are making an impact on the bioprocessing sector, with the Taskforce securing it for helping industry to influence government around the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy and having a range of successful outputs. KTN has a pivotal role in supporting ATMT: through our role in the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP), KTN was asked to lead the secretariat function for the task force, working alongside the Office for Life Sciences, ABPI, BIA, MMIP and the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult. KTN’s role in this work has been to lead on strategy and engagement with industry; to facilitate discussion across public sector stakeholders, industry and academia.

 

RoslinCT

Roslin Cell Therapies, alongside UK-based stem cell company, Reprocell, won ¬£1.2 million funding from Innovate UK as part of the ISCF Medicines Manufacturing call. The funding is going towards improving the efficiency of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) production. KTN provided support for RoslinCT‚Äôs application, which proved to be instrumental in gaining the funding. “Since the spin out as Roslin Cell Therapies Ltd from Roslin Cells in 2015 we‚Äôve been really pleased to have the relationship with KTN to explore potential funding strategies, over the last 18 months in particular. KTN and Sarah‚Äôs expertise have really added value through both connecting us across the sector and finding opportunities relevant to the company.‚Äù Janet Downie, CEO of RoslinCT.

 

How KTN is opening-up access to NHS data-sets to facilitate collaboration and innovation

KTN held a highly successful design-led workshop in Aberdeen in October 2018 to facilitate access to healthcare data-sets for innovative SMEs. It’s currently challenging to access these data-sets as they’re held in ‘safe havens’ but it is beneficial to open up access to this information, particularly for SMEs. For this reason, KTN met with the Grampian Data Safe Haven (DaSH) alongside 13 businesses to discuss collaborations between SMEs and DaSH, with the result being that several businesses are currently in discussion with the DaSH team as part of on-going activity and we hope to see consortia bid for Innovate UK funding in 2019 to develop their ideas.

 

Prokarium Ltd.

Prokarium Ltd, a synthetic biology company in London, has to date received £2.2m funding from InnovateUK, which has enabled the establishment and expansion of the company; this funding has largely gone towards developing vaccines, including for Zika virus. Recently Prokarium has expanded into immuno-oncology, specifically in utilising Salmonella’s ability to target tumours in order to shrink the tumour. The company therefore sought potential collaborators through KTN, which has led to an introduction to an oncology group at the University of Leeds.

 

UK-China Collaboration to Tackle Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)

The UK Department of Health and Social Care and Innovate UK launched the UK-China collaboration to tackle antimicrobial resistance competition in April 2018. Ahead of the competition’s launch Innovate UK contracted KTN to deliver a number of information and partnering activities in the UK and China. This included delivering information and partnering roadshows in the UK, a partnering visit to China, a partnering webinar, as well as an online partnering tool. The November 2017 trip to China allowed participants to make contact and identify opportunities for collaborative projects to tackle AMR. KTN’s role in the trip to China was indispensable, coordinating the logistics of the trip and working with relevant stakeholders (DHSC, Innovate UK, British Embassy in Beijing, SIN and Research Councils UK) to successfully deliver the programme for the 17 UK delegates. The UK participants on the trip made up to 350 connections in total, with Innovate UK subsequently receiving 27 grant applications to the competition; 19 applicants were selected with 16 of the 19 having participated in an information or partnering activity organised by KTN.

 

 

Find out more about the health team and how they could help your organisation here.

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