How do we supercharge and sustain skills in UK Life Sciences?
Medicines Discovery Catapult is reshaping drug discovery for patient benefit by transforming great UK science into better treatments through partnership. The life sciences industry is critical to the UK’s health, wealth, and resilience. Attracting, recruiting, training, and retaining a skilled workforce is key to ongoing success in this critical sector.
The life sciences sector is among the most valuable and strategically important to the UK economy.[2]
In the UK, life sciences employment has increased continuously since 2012. According to the Office for Life Sciences, there were 282,000 people employed in the UK life sciences sector in 2021 – a 4% increase compared to 2020.
Medicines Discovery Catapult is at the life science industry’s epicentre. Ideally placed to identify key areas where drug innovators need advanced skills to enable the development of game-changing medical breakthroughs and benefit patients.
Global competition and the application of new disciplines, such as AI and complex personalised medicines, means that the sector’s continued growth depends upon building
[1] British Science Association, 2022
[2] Bioscience & Health Technology Statistics, 2021
a multi-disciplined pipeline of bright minds already in the industry and the ability to attract new talent with specialist skills.
As part of this mission, Medicines Discovery Catapult continues to contribute to skills development by:
- Teaming up with the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership’s (LEP) Pledge Partnership for a school engagement programme reaching hundreds of pupils across 13 schools with interactive lessons delivered by Catapult scientists.
- Producing a virtual school video lesson as part of the British Science Week curriculum. Distributed to 90 schools across the regional school network and receiving over 340 views so far.
- Hosting an annual cohort of PhD interns from local Universities as part of a training, talent, and skills agenda, to help develop the next generation of drug discovery researchers.
- Engaging in eight national celebration days, including British Science Week and International Day of Women & Girls in Science, shining a spotlight on the importance of the Life Sciences sector and highlighting career opportunities.
- Driving the skills conversation for the sector through high-profile thought leadership.
Nurturing and inspiring the next generation of scientists is joyful and purposeful. They will be crucial in growing our sector and improving our healthcare, so encouraging agile and multidisciplined scientists into the industry has never been more important. Our daily interactions with a wide range of R&D innovators allow us to see gaps and foster skills development from the roots up. We will continue to build upon the initiatives we, and our colleagues across the UK, have established to ensure a steady pipeline of multidisciplined, investible talent to sustain our sector’s growth long into the future.