UK SPINE receives additional funding and starts the next phase of work

The UK SPINE, with its central aim to accelerate drug discovery for healthy ageing, has been awarded £1.64m from Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) for a new programme of work that builds on its previous achievements. As a collaborative network of 6 hubs, the UK SPINE is made up of the University of Oxford, University of Birmingham, University of Dundee, the Medicines Discovery Catapult, Francis Crick Institute and EMBL-EBI/Open Targets.

Over the past three years, support from the CCF has enabled UK SPINE to lay the foundations of the project by constructing framework agreement to provide a basis for collaborative working. The project also funded 32 projects relating to discovery of therapeutics to treat diseases of ageing and knowledge exchange, hosted 13 events bring together a variety of stakeholders and brought together hundreds of key stakeholders from across the geroscience¹ community.

For the next phase of the project, our focus will be on building on these foundations to progress candidates through drug discovery and into clinical development. We have already begun a programme of supporting projects, ranging from biomarker validation and target discovery and validation to preclinical studies. In addition, wheels have been in motion in our aim to grow talent in geroscience, through our involvement, alongside the Francis Crick Institute, in the KQ Labs programme, a five-month accelerator programme for early-stage start-ups who use data as a core part of their business model to improve human health.

UK SPINE will also continue to focus on bringing together the geroscience community by disseminating findings, organising events, participating in regulatory discussions, policy engagement and patient involvement and engagement, over the coming year.

The CCF fund was created to build on the knowledge exchange expertise and capabilities across higher education institutions to contribute to productivity and economic growth. Under the scheme knowledge exchange is central to achieving the aim of translating university research into innovative technological advances.

At the UK SPINE knowledge exchange and open innovation is at the forefront of how we aim to accelerate drug discovery. Working with partners we aim to bring together the expertise necessary during drug discovery. In an innovative, goal-led approach, the network’s hub institutions contribute capabilities spanning basic biological science,

For more information or to discuss how you might work with the UK SPINE, please email us - contact@kespine.org.uk

[1] Geroscience is a relatively new term, coined by the National Institutes of Health in the USA, used to refer to the relationship between the biology of ageing and chronic disease.