- 130 leaders gather as part of Leicestershire Innovation Festival
- Charnwood Campus and Midlands Medilink stage day of impactful speakers
- Industry leaders, investors and innovators queue up to deliver insights at sell-out summit
More than 130 industry leaders, investors and innovators gathered at Charnwood Campus for a major conference focused on East Midlands growth.
The event saw a series of speakers and panellists discuss methods to build a resilient, high‑growth, globally competitive life sciences cluster in the region.
Senior figures from government, industry, finance and the NHS explored how the region can accelerate innovation, commercialisation and manufacturing in life sciences.
The one-day summit – organised by Charnwood Campus Science, Innovation and Technology Park in Loughborough in partnership with Medilink Midlands – formed part of a wider programme of work to develop a clear regional blueprint for life sciences growth.
This week’s event came as part of the wider Leicestershire Innovation Festival and the agenda focused on finance and investment, scaling innovation, and strengthening the region’s manufacturing and regulatory ecosystem. All activity was designed to support East Midlands companies to compete on the global stage.
Opening the conference, Charnwood Campus Director Gosia Khrais set out the opportunity for the East Midlands to position itself as a stable, resilient location for research, clinical trials and manufacturing in an increasingly uncertain global environment.
“Global challenges are actually our opportunity,” she told delegates. “Companies and investors are increasingly looking for resilient, stable locations for research, for clinical trials, for manufacturing.
“This is our chance. The East Midlands has a real opportunity to position itself as one of those locations, but only if we work together around a clear regional strategy that connects the different parts of a currently fragmented ecosystem.”
The keynote address was delivered by Louise Knowles, Deputy Director of the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency Innovation Accelerator, who outlined how the MHRA is enabling life sciences innovation by providing enhanced access to regulatory expertise and guidance for novel health technologies. This was followed by a contribution from Sue Tilley, Chair of Leicestershire Business Voice, on how collaboration can move the region from “connection to amplification” in life sciences growth.
Throughout the event, speakers and panellists examined how the UK can lead in life sciences manufacturing and how that ambition should be financed. An industry perspective on driving investment and capital attractiveness through manufacturing excellence and continuous improvement set the tone for several panels, bringing together senior leaders from global stakeholders including Horiba, Zydus UK, Kindeva, and Quotient Sciences.
Later sessions turned to the challenge of scaling innovations and understanding what investors fund, what they do not, and why. Nicole McGlennon, Managing Director of Health Innovation Network East Midlands, and Nat Hutley, Founder of Koodos, explored why scaling matters and how health innovation networks can support innovators on that journey. Meanwhile, representatives from Barclays Innovation Banking, MedTech Makers Lab, TBAT Innovation, and the British Business Bank discussed the realities of financing scale in the current market.
The day concluded with a series of innovators’ pitches moderated by TBAT founder Sam Stephens, featuring Storke, MedTech Makers Lab, Warmer Networks, Epic Medlab and De Montfort University. The discussions and outcomes from the event are now set to feed directly into a regional position paper setting out practical recommendations for delivering a stronger, more competitive East Midlands life sciences cluster.
