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From being featured in Health Innovation Leeds’ Business in the Spotlight series, to hosting a ministerial roundtable and lab visit at Nexus, and representing the UK on Innovate UK’s Global Business Innovation Programme (GBIP) to Singapore, the past few weeks have reinforced both the strength of the Leeds ecosystem and the global relevance of our work.
We were proud to be the focus of Health Innovation Leeds’ recent Business in the Spotlight feature, which highlighted the vision behind MNS and the potential impact of our Miarcus™ platform on how vaccines and medicines are delivered.
The piece explored our journey from an academic concept at the University of Leeds to agrowing medtech company based at Nexus, and the way Miarcus™ aims to remove long-standing barriers to access:
● Enabling painless, self-applied dosing
● Reducing reliance on cold-chain logistics
● Freeing clinical capacity, and
● Supporting people who struggle with needle-based delivery.
You can read the full feature on the Health Innovation Leeds website: “Business in the Spotlight – Microneedle Solutions” (healthinnovationleeds.com).
That theme of “Leeds as a health innovation hub” came into sharp focus when MNS hosted a ministerial roundtable and lab visit at Nexus with a cross-party delegation from the UK Parliament.
The delegation, part of the Business and Trade Committee’s work, included:
● Liam Byrne (Labour; Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) – Chair
● Mr Joshua Reynolds (Liberal Democrat; Maidenhead)
● John Cooper (Conservative; Dumfries and Galloway)
● Sarah Edwards (Labour; Tamworth)
The visit brought together parliamentarians, regional leaders and innovators to discuss both the opportunities and the real-world challenges faced by medtech companies operating in the North of England.
At the roundtable and during the subsequent lab tour, we were able to:
● Demonstrate the Miarcus™ platform in our Nexus laboratory
● Share how we are working with Leeds Teaching Hospitals and NIHR partners to deliver first-in-human studies
● Highlight the importance of specialist manufacturing, regulatory clarity and patient access pathways for scaling medtech in the North
● Emphasise how Leeds’ joined-up ecosystem – spanning academia, the NHS, investors and innovators – can help position the region as a leading UK health innovation hub
For MNS, it was a valuable opportunity to ensure that the lived experience of building and testing new health technologies in Leeds is reflected directly in national policy conversations.
Shortly after the ministerial visit, MNS was honoured to be selected as part of Innovate UK’s Global Business Innovation Programme (GBIP) delegation to Singapore.
Alongside a fantastic cohort of UK medtech and healthtech companies, we spent an intensive week:
● Meeting the British High Commissioner and UK Science & Technology Network in Singapore
● Engaging with local hospitals, innovation agencies and accelerators
● Speaking with investors, corporate partners and manufacturers across the Singaporean and wider Southeast Asian ecosystem
● Exploring how needle-free drug delivery can support shared priorities around prevention, community-based care and health system resilience
The mission underlined just how globally relevant the challenges we are working on really are – from workforce pressures and infrastructure constraints to vaccine hesitancy and health inequalities. It also opened up a number of promising conversations about future collaboration in the region.
Taken together, the Health Innovation Leeds spotlight, the ministerial roundtable and lab visit, and the GBIP mission to Singapore tell a coherent story:
● Leeds is emerging as a key health innovation hub for the UK
● Policymakers are actively engaging with innovators to understand what it takes to translate ideas into impact
● There is strong international interest in solutions that can expand access to medicines and vaccines in a safe, scalable and patient-friendly way
MNS is committed to playing our part in that story. Over the coming months we will continue to:
● Progress our first-in-human clinical studies
● Deepen our partnerships across the Leeds and West Yorkshire ecosystem
● Build on the relationships formed through GBIP as we explore routes to global deployment
Our mission remains clear: to reduce health inequalities across the globe by increasing access to medication, irrespective of location, race or gender – starting with a microneedle patch developed in Leeds and designed for the world.