Published:
Future medicine and vaccine makers will be able to develop their skills using virtual reality thanks to a new national Centre of Excellence.
The RESILIENCE Centre of Excellence for UK Medicines Manufacturing Skills will deliver training and outreach materials and programmes that addresses skills demands in the life sciences sector.
The Centre will be run by an academic consortium of UK universities, including Heriot-Watt, led by the University of Birmingham, and will receive £4.5m of funding from Innovate UK and the Office for Life Sciences. It will work with healthcare and pharmaceutical organisations to provide a single-entry point for training and career input including a pipeline of continuing professional development courses.
Students across the UK will benefit from access to training that draws on the best and most innovative teaching being developed by the RESILIENCE Centre, including the use of virtual reality and mixed reality situations that give students ‘near to real life’ experiences of lab environments for medicine manufacturing in addition to more traditional teaching approaches.
Heriot-Watt University's role in the RESILIENCE research programme will come together with the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) which houses the FlexBIO Flexible Scale-Up Facility that enables skills training in bioprocessing to support large scale (bio)pharma, vaccines, viral vector, and cell/gene therapy industrial scale production.
The Heriot-Watt team is led by Professor Nik Willoughby who is Director of the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering and Scientific Director of FlexBIO.
The University will hire a new Training Lead to support the development and delivery of new training programmes at FlexBIO in upstream and downstream bioprocessing. It will also hire a Digital Training Fellow as part of a strategic set of hires across all centres to lead digital training, including VR and online apps, to drive consistency and scalability in teaching.
Professor Nik Willoughby said:
"RESILIENCE will contribute significantly to the education of the upcoming generation with essential skills for the development and manufacture of future medicines. Our emerging Global Research Institute in Health and Care Technologies exemplifies our commitment to advancing healthcare through innovative research-led teaching and entrepreneurial collaboration.
“The IBioIC bioprocessing scale-up facility, FlexBIO stands out for its success in aiding companies through the critical stages of biomanufacturing scale-up. Renowned for its excellence in delivering hands-on bioprocessing training, FlexBIO leverages IBioIC's extensive network to amplify RESILENCE's impact, ensuring significant advancements for Scotland in the biotechnology sector.
"IBioIC plays a pivotal role in Scotland's industrial biotechnology landscape. As a key proponent of Scotland’s National Plan for Industrial Biotechnology, aiming for a £1.2 billion industry-associated turnover and supporting 4,000 direct jobs by 2025, IBioIC's efforts in facilitating collaboration, offering scale-up capabilities, and developing skill sets are instrumental. With 195 industry members, a majority being SMEs, IBioIC's influence extends through its support of over 200 companies, signifying a robust partnership that Heriot-Watt University is proud to be a part of."
Ivan Wall, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at the University of Birmingham and Co-Director of RESILIENCE said:
“The UK is a global leader in life sciences research, but there is a critical and growing skills shortage across the medicines manufacturing industry. The RESILIENCE Centre of Excellence will bridge this skills gap, by developing a pipeline of talent and providing training for industry to ensure current and future employees possess the right skills for a rapidly evolving sector.”
Addressing a Maths Summit at the Science Museum in London, Science and Technology Secretary, Michelle Donelan, said:
“Building on our reforms to the skills system will require work from each and every one of us – universities, schools, and businesses. By doubling down on our investments in skills and backing British business, we can lay the foundations for an economy fit for the future - an economy that creates jobs and improves lives for communities up and down the country.
“That is how we make our science and tech superpower mission a success.”
The RESILIENCE Centre will provide teaching and outreach materials to 150 schools, colleges, and universities for free, and training courses will also be developed to support the existing workforce in the UK medicines manufacturing community, across industry and NHS, to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of medicines development and is ready to combat future pandemics.
Anyone interested in collaborating with the new Health and Care Technologies global research institute at Heriot-Watt University can contact GRID@hw.ac.uk