Biomodifying Technologies Project: Second Policy Briefing Published

Michael Morrison, who leads the Biomodifying Technologies project, has recently published a second policy briefing titled "Accelerating Innovation: Speed and Timing in Translational Research". The policy briefing can be viewed on the Regenerative Medicine Journal. 

The project is led by the University of Oxford in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Sussex and the University of York, and funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The project is aims to investigate the likely impact of such technology on human health, healthcare and medicine in the UK. Michael Morrison and Jane Kaye from our Faculty are both part of the project. 

This is the second of four policy briefings. In this briefing, the team discuss the challenges of time and timing in translating biomodifying therapy research into enabling technologies. In this new briefing, Michael examines issues of time and timing in the clinical translation of therapies based on gene editing, induced pluripotent stem cells and 3D bioprinting.

Co-ordinating timing is a perennial challenge for innovation across sectors, but it takes on particular importance in medicine, with the current impetus for getting promising new therapies to patients more quickly. Producing and delivering advanced therapies requires co-ordination between developers, manufacturers, investors, regulators and clinical staff in hospitals.

Policy support could beneficially target innovation in supporting technologies that improve the speed of manufacture and delivery, but a distinction needs to be made between instances where state support is appropriate and those best left to market-led initiatives.