The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines showcased the speed and flexibility of mRNA technologies.1 In the years since, researchers and policymakers have begun exploring broader applications – from oncology and rare diseases to emerging infectious threats.
With world-class universities, a single-payer health system, and established life sciences clusters, the UK is well placed to lead. Yet translating that potential into a strategic growth engine requires more than research excellence: it depends on regulatory innovation, data integration, dedicated infrastructure, and sustained political will.
The UK’s Invest 2035 industrial strategy positions life sciences as one of eight priority growth sectors and aims to foster long-term investment certainty, boost productivity, and ensure global competitiveness.2 The question now is: how can the UK best embed mRNA at the heart of that ambition?
We asked experts from industry, academia, and policymaking for their thoughts.
Darcy Ward, senior policy analyst, Tony Blair Institute
To realise the potential of mRNA, the UK must embed trial delivery within its robust, data-rich environment. In 2024, the TBI proposed the creation of a National Data Trust to consolidate fragmented health datasets from sources such as NHS Secure Data Environments, CPRD, Genomics England and UK Biobank. This vision began to materialise in April 2025 with the announcement of the Health Data Research Service, backed by £600m in joint funding from the UK government and the Wellcome Trust.3
Attention now turns to delivery. The HDRS must evolve into a government-owned, commercially structured vehicle that can unlock anonymised, linked, and interoperable health data in a secure, ethical, and transparent manner. It should build on the existing data for research and development ‘R&D’ programme, while expanding to serve as the backbone of a thriving national clinical trials service, especially for high-potential technologies such as mRNA.
Embedding trial recruitment and delivery within this connected data ecosystem brings several transformative advantages. It would significantly reduce time-to-treatment for conditions like cancer, allowing mRNA-based therapeutics to replace more invasive and time-consuming treatments, benefitting both patient outcomes and national productivity. Embedding clinical trials into a mature data infrastructure could generate £2bn in additional value for the UK economy by 2030.4
By integrating a clinical trial service with sovereign, best-in-class data infrastructure, the UK can not only lead in mRNA research but own the full delivery pathway. This ecosystem would make the country the global home for mRNA trials and attract sustained investment in advanced biologics.
Delivering on the HDRS at speed would transform mRNA from a research strength into a scalable, strategic economic engine powering health innovation, industrial growth, and improved outcomes across the UK.
Hamilton Bennett, executive director, resilience research and development ‘R&D’ and partnerships, Moderna
A unique feature of mRNA lipid nanoparticle vaccines is that the delivery science and manufacturing process is largely unchanged from product to product. Often, only mRNA sequences are altered, to encode for a different protein and thereby creating a new vaccine. This “platform approach” has accelerated the development of dozens of vaccine candidates in recent years.
The UK can turn these platform efficiencies into a national advantage by creating a single, cross-government mRNA “Prevention & Preparedness Pathway”, binding regulation, adoption, and procurement into one coherent framework. Treating mRNA as a reusable national capability, ready to be rapidly adapted to emerging threats to public health would empower the system to plan and act at speed, aligning the MHRA, NHS and His Majesty’s Treasury behind one predictable route that accelerates its Life Sciences Sector Plan and enhances competitiveness.
A robust, platform-based regulatory approval route would sit at the centre of this framework. Modifying the existing regulatory framework to allow the MHRA to consider platform performance for quality, manufacturing, and clinical safety and efficacy in their assessment of new medicines would provide a robust dataset for review while reducing the time and cost of developing new medicines, ultimately bringing these medicines to the public more quickly.
Once a new medicine is approved for use in the UK population via this pathway, continued monitoring for risk/benefit will be important. MHRA, MRC, NIHR, major academic centers and UKHSA would lead this work by setting the tests, confirming reliable markers, and tracking safety and impact over time, ensuring accelerated pathways are underpinned by robust data, with transparent and reproducible methodologies.
Standing advance market commitments for treatments in priority disease areas could complement this framework for treatments. They would be triggered by epidemiological or immunological thresholds and ensure rapid population-wide deployment once criteria are met. UK-based trials and integrated surveillance – using the UK’s first-in-class datasets – would provide the feedback loops necessary to adapt post-market would be would be triggered by epidemiological or immunological thresholds and ensure rapid population-wide deployment once criteria are met. UK-based trials and integrated surveillance – using the UK’s first-in-class datasets – would provide the feedback loops necessary to adapt post-market recommendations and standards of care over time.
Such a pathway would shorten the time from antigen design to deployment, and signal that the UK offers a reliable, lower-risk route from lab to population. Patients could gain earlier access to innovative vaccines and therapeutics; the government would send a clear signal that the UK is the primary launch environment for scientifically rigorous, platform-based interventions that support delivery of its policy ambitions; and industry gains the confidence to commit a greater proportion of mRNA R&D and manufacturing to the UK.
Dr Lennard YW Lee, associate professor, University of Oxford
We need to consider a national Cancer Vaccine Clinical Champion – an independent leader coordinating the disparate efforts across departments, aligning priorities between government and the NHS, trusted by industry to ensure that progress continues at pace.
This role could sit above organisations, reporting directly to ministers, focused on unblocking barriers, accelerating trials, and uniting research and delivery into one coherent mission.
In 2020, we saw what becomes possible when patient need, industry capabilities, and bold government leadership aligns. Our efforts helped deliver life-saving vaccines, tests and treatments to billions. British science and partnership rose brightly, in our moment of greatest need.
Today, that very spirit is rising again, changing lives in cancer centres across the country. That energy drives the Cancer Vaccine Advances.
From a standing start, we built something extraordinary. In a year, we became one of the world’s top recruiters into cancer vaccine clinical trials – testing potential vaccines through teams and systems I have been honoured to lead. Teams collaborating, full of belief, skill and determination. Change in health doesn’t have to take decades, when it could take years or months.
We can and should deliver more opportunities. National flagship projects go beyond giving hope to save lives – they shine the way for the kind of country we want to be. A UK that backs science. A country with purpose. Belief and confidence to change baked into systems, borne out of collaboration, to empower us all to solve our big problems.
Together we have now twice proven what’s possible. For infectious diseases and cancer care.
Collaboration and trust are all powerful. When you get the right people in the room, with the right mission, the herd moves. Progress accelerates. And we transform lives.
We need to ensure that everything is in place so that Britain can once again be the transformative science launchpad for health across the world.
Junaid Bajwa, senior partner, Flagship Pioneering
Create a permanent national mRNA initiative: a standing NHS based infrastructure to design, host, and run adaptive platform trials for mRNA therapeutics and vaccines.
This initiative would institutionalise the crisis-born agility of the Vaccine Taskforce, the efficiency of the RECOVERY trial, and the integrated access model of the Cancer Vaccine Launchpad -where mRNA cancer vaccines are being embedded into NHS care.
Turning that agility into a sustained competitive advantage, the UK would lead in the development and deployment of next generation mRNA technologies.
Key steps might include establishing a national adaptive trial framework; funding dedicated NHS infrastructure and workforce for mRNA trial initiation; aligning the MHRA and NIHR to fasttrack regulatory and ethical approvals; co- investment vehicles to de-risk early stage manufacturing, and embedding systems for real world evidence generation. These measures would lower trial costs and accelerate development timelines.
The UK could become the most attractive environment for mRNA trials, providing patients earlier access to life saving innovations. Critically, this approach would leverage existing NHS digital infrastructure, NIHR, and regulatory alignment to help realise the NHS’s strategic vision of being the best possible partner for innovation. This would position the UK as the first market where mRNA technologies are conceived, tested, and deployed, realising the promise of one of the most transformative technologies of our time.
Martin Turner, director of policy and external affairs, BioIndustry Association
The UK is exceptionally well positioned to become a global mRNA powerhouse, underpinned by a strong academic and research ecosystem, and strengthened by government-backed manufacturing infrastructure that provides a solid foundation for scalable growth.
If a single policy could accelerate this trajectory, it should focus on enabling a forward-looking, flexible regulatory framework. Specifically, the adoption of a ‘platform approach’ to mRNA development.
The MHRA has already shown global leadership in supporting mRNA innovation, and its continued commitment to adaptive, streamlined regulation is crucial.
Given the vast potential applications of mRNA, a platform-based regulatory model would not only reduce time and cost to market, but also enhance the UK’s responsiveness to emerging health threats. Embedding this approach would minimise regulatory fragmentation, while building the quality systems, infrastructure, and workforce capability needed to lead in the manufacture of personalised and next-generation medicines.
This article first appeared in The UK’s mRNA opportunity: Growth, resilience, leadership, a New Statesman report, funded by Moderna. Participants were not paid for their involvement, all views and opinions are their own and have not been influenced by Moderna.
- How have COVID-19 vaccines been developed so fast?, British Society for Immunology, https://www.immunology.org/public-information/vaccine-resources/covid-19/covid-19-vaccine-infographics/speed-of-development?utm_source=chatgpt.com ↩︎
- Invest 2035: the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/670d394f3b919067bb48310c/invest-2035-the-uks-modern_industrial-strategy.pdf ↩︎
- Gov.uk, Prime Minister turbochargers medical research, April 2025, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-turbocharges-medical-research ↩︎
- Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, A New National Purpose: Harnessing Data for Health, May 2024, available at https://institute.global/insights/politics-and-governance/a-new-national-purpose-harnessing-data-for-health ↩︎
Date of preparation: October 2025
Material number: UK-MRNA-2500106
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