The Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) will act as a collaborative ‘hub’ of national expertise, bringing together patient groups, academia, technology, the informatics industry and regulators, to develop and validate new ways of discovering new medicines, supporting the UK’s strength in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and contract research space.
It will foster new technologies to improve success rates in clinical evaluation and prove informatics techniques that enable effective collaboration. It will work with patient groups, regulators and other Catapults to turn today’s ‘first-In-man’ process into a ‘fast-to-patient’ UK medicines pipeline.
The MDC intends to encourage new routes of financing for innovative medicines and provide active mentoring for a generation of biotech leaders and research clinicians.

MDC will directly support and enhance SMEs and service providers in the ‘discovery’ sector. It will help those in the sector take risks; it will provide a flow of money and technology to UK service providers, invest in the infrastructure needed for medium to long term sector growth and help develop sustainable talent.

Through these innovations MDC will make the UK the preferred global environment to discover and prove new medicines, enabling the nation to maintain its heritage position as the global leader in this industry.