Objective

The Medicines Discovery Catapult is part of the UK Catapult network. We work collaboratively with all sectors of the UK medicines discovery industry with the primary aim of helping SME biotechs, academics and innovators to access the laboratory facilities, knowledge, data, technologies and networks they need to progress their R&D programmes faster and more cost-effectively. In the this talk I will describe our core enabling themes, which are a direct response to the needs of the SME community, and from these how we engage with the life science community. For example, our Science & Technology and Informatics capabilities are focussed on developing and exploiting state-of-the-art solutions that allow a deeper understanding of target biology and compound mechanism of action and securing and analysing the complex information and data sets associated with drug discovery. Within Virtual R&D we work with life science entrepreneurs to help them deliver their projects through external networks of best-in-class R&D partners and service providers, while Discovery Syndicates, anchored by the relevant medical research charity will build disease focused consortia, centered around real patient needs. Together we aim to turn good science into new, high-value products and services that are used to improve productivity across the sector.