Northern Ireland was named today as one of the centres of excellence which will partner with the new Precision Medicine Catapult in Cambridge.
Catapult centres were launched in 2011 with the aim of bringing together businesses and researchers to help start-ups bring ideas to market that might otherwise struggle because of a lack of funding, expertise or facilities.
Cambridge Biomedical Campus – the new home of AstraZeneca – was announced as the headquarters for this latest catapult. It will partner with centres of excellence across the UK and will effectively work towards engineering personalised medicines, based on an individual’s genetic make-up.
The appointment of John McKinley as CEO of the Precision Medicine Catapult has also been announced.
The network is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2016/17.
The decision to place a centre of excellence in Northern Ireland reflects the findings of MATRIX Life and Health Sciences Foresight Report which we launched in February 2015. The report outlined the enabling technologies and processes required to capitalise on opportunities such as big data, precision medicine, diagnostics and connected health.
It went on to recommend that five areas need particular focus for Northern Ireland to succeed in this market place – Government leadership, focus on strengths, using HSC Innovation assets to their full potential, a unified approach to attracting FDI and a well developed ecosystem to support sectoral growth.