Details emerge of £400m investment programme tied to VPAG

The £400 million ($529 million) investment programme pledged as part of the new voluntary system of rebates paid by pharma companies in the UK has been announced and will focus mainly on supporting the clinical research sector.

The lion's share (75%) of the investment money will be made available to set up a network of 18 clinical research hubs – called Commercial Research Delivery Centres (CRDCs) – along with other projects aimed at boosting patient recruitment into studies.

Of the remainder, 20% will go towards initiatives to promote sustainable manufacturing, improving efficiency whilst also reducing waste and emissions, and 5% to a programme to modernise health technology assessment (HTA) processes used to determine the cost-effectiveness of therapies and whether they can be used by the NHS.

The initiative was first announced as part of the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicine Pricing, Access, and Growth (VPAG) last year, the latest iteration of the scheme designed to limit rises in medicines spending in the UK, which will channel investment into the UK life sciences sector over its five-year term.

It takes the form of a public-private partnership and, according to the government, will help to "kickstart economic growth and build an NHS fit for the future." The previous Conservative government promised a £520 million investment programme for life sciences to go alongside the £400 million from industry.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said it is the first agreement at this scale in the world and will build the "global competitiveness of the UK's life sciences sector [and] ensure that new treatments move swiftly from labs to wards, providing patients with faster access to cutting-edge treatments."

Additional elements of the investment package include the provision of new equipment and technology that will make it easier to run trials across hospital and primary, community and residential care settings, support for the HTA Innovation Laboratory at NICE, and a new horizon scanning database – UK Pharmascan – to provide information on new medicines coming to market.

"The life science industry has the potential to deliver so much more for the UK – but to do this, we need to fix the NHS, improve patient access to medicines and invest more in our critical science and regulatory infrastructure," said ABPI chief executive Richard Torbett.

"This world-first investment programme puts industry money behind the government's vision to make better health and science a driver of economic growth."

The emphasis on clinical research in the investment package is in line with the findings of the O'Shaughnessy review of commercial clinical trials published last year, which, among other recommendations, called for a doubling in trial recruitment by 2025 and another doubling by 2027. It also ties in with the government's life sciences plan and net-zero targets.