Funding opportunity launched to strengthen UK regulatory science and support healthcare innovation  

A new £20m programme to create four new Centres of Excellence for Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSIs), with each funded for up to five years, is set to strengthen the UK’s capability and agility in regulatory science and help ensure regulation keeps pace with rapid advances in healthcare and life sciences. 

Developed through a partnership between the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Office for Life Sciences (OLS), the funding opportunity, launched today (22 September), is inviting applications to establish the four centres. 

The CERSIs will bring together world-leading expertise from across academia, industry, healthcare and regulation to develop practical solutions to emerging regulatory challenges and help ensure new innovations can be safely adopted in practice.  

Following extensive engagement across the sector, four strategic areas have been identified where regulatory science capability is required to support the next generation of healthcare innovation:  

Data driven approaches and artificial intelligence  

Prevention, early detection and novel evidence approaches  

Personalised healthcare and pharmacogenomics   

As healthcare innovation continues to advance, regulatory science plays an increasingly important role so that new technologies can be evaluated, regulated and translated into patient benefit. 

Through the new programme, CERSIs will help develop the evidence, expertise and methods needed to support regulatory preparedness for emerging technologies and address complex challenges across the health and life sciences system. 

MHRA Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, Professor Jacob George, said: 

The biggest challenges facing healthcare innovation can’t be solved by any one organisation alone.