Alcyomics is proud to announce its role within the new Northern Alliance Advanced Therapies Treatment Centre (NAATTC), one of only three Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres in the UK that have been established to facilitate the development, commercialisation and adoption of Cell, Gene and Tissue Engineered Therapies.
The centres have been awarded £21 million from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund with further funding available to support the delivery of projects by the network. This funding is part of the £146 million allocation set aside under the Medicines Manufacturing Challenge to develop first-of-a-kind technologies for the manufacture of innovative medicines
Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) are less traditional than standard pharmaceutical methods however have been shown to mitigate and even cure many degenerative diseases and cancers. The award of £7m to the Northern Alliance will serve to streamline the processes and practicality of advancing these therapies into treatments via the NHS.
Alcyomics’s unique in vitro human skin models, will be used to assess safety for the ATMPs developed. The Alcyomics patented Skimune® platform is already being used by pharmaceutical and biotechnical companies across the globe for safety assessment of novel compounds and will prove to be an invaluable tool for the Northern Alliance.
The Advanced Therapies Treatment Centres are coordinated by the Cell and Gene Therapy Network; the Northern Alliance will work closely with the other two centres that span Wales, The Midlands and Manchester. The Northern Alliance is led by Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and comprises of an additional 18 alliance partners including Alcyomics and other innovative industry leaders.
Professor Anne Dickinson, CEO of Alcyomics and the Director of Newcastle Cellular Therapies Facility, said: “Alcyomics are delighted to use our unique safety testing approach to help advance new therapies into the NHS and beyond. Being able to provide and streamline a new generation of medicines leading to innovative solutions to many of today’s medical challenges is a great step forward and we are proud to be part of the exciting NAATTC initiative”.
