Seventeen projects across the UK that are focused on innovative medicine manufacturing and drug discovery have been awarded a share of £13 million.

It is hoped the money from Innovate UK will help drive digitalisation in the sector as well as boost the economy.

They will be delivered via the organisation’s Transforming Medicines Manufacturing programme, which aims to bolster the UK’s manufacturing capabilities through technology development and adoption.

Some £10 million of the total funding was awarded by the Government’s Life Sci for Growth package, a £650 million fund announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in May to elevate the country’s life sciences industry.

The new projects span three fields; digitalisation and automation, the exploration of nucleic acid, and intracellular drug delivery, or the process of introducing external materials into living cells.

A number of the projects involve the production of MRNA vaccines, with research ongoing to make them better and cheaper while reducing the costs of making them.

Sarah Goulding, executive director of healthy living and agriculture domain at Innovate UK, said: “There is a real breadth of innovation and collaboration across businesses being funded through Innovate UK’s Transforming Medicines Manufacturing programme.

“This underscores our ambitious vision to de-risk technology, boost economic growth, build resilience into the UK healthcare ecosystem and ultimately to make the UK a centre of excellence in medicines manufacturing innovation.”

Elsewhere, a number of projects will focus on cell and gene therapy while others will look at new freeze-drying processes.

Mark Talford, deputy challenge director in medicines manufacturing at Innovate UK, added: “This support for collaboration across the UK medicines manufacturing landscape to develop innovative nucleic acid medicines will drive forward digitalisation and automation technology.”