Innovation investment company LYVA Labs joins iiCON

The Infection Innovation Consortium: iiCON has welcomed LYVA Labs, an innovation investment company based in the Liverpool City Region, as a core consortium partner.

LYVA Labs, which launched in 2021, works to drive investment and growth through the commercialisation of innovation. Supported by a £10.5M investment from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, LYVA Labs provides funding, incubation, and consultancy to companies at all stages, accelerating and supporting innovation-led growth with a particular focus on organisations working in health, life sciences, and deep tech.

Led by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), iiCON is a global R&D program that brings together industry, academia, and clinical organisations to speed up the discovery and development of new treatments, diagnostics, and preventative products for infectious diseases – saving and improving millions of lives through collaborative innovation.

LYVA Labs joins existing core partners within iiCON including Evotec, Infex Therapeutics, LifeArc, Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation Trust, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), Unilever, and the University of Liverpool.

Under the new agreement, the two organisations will pool knowledge and resources to deliver key programmes of activity to strengthen innovation-led growth across the Liverpool City Region, nationally and globally.

As a core partner, LYVA Labs will strengthen iiCON’s activity to support SMEs and develop regional innovation ecosystems. It will also work to support the spin-out and commercialisation of assets developed by iiCON partners and collaborators.

Professor Janet Hemingway, iiCON founding director, said: “LYVA Labs has had an incredible impact on the Liverpool City Region since it launched four years ago – playing an important role in expanding and strengthening the regional ecosystem and scaling innovation led activity.

“iiCON and LYVA Labs have jointly delivered a number of impactful programmes to drive forward innovation led growth over the years and our organisations benefit from significant synergies. Welcoming LYVA Labs as a core member of our consortium formalises this partnership.

“This agreement will strengthen the existing links between the organisations and enable us to continue to work together to deliver new programmes that will expand and strengthen the innovation ecosystem both in the Liverpool City Region and beyond.”

Lorna Green, CEO of LYVA Labs, said: “iiCON is an international success, delivering groundbreaking translational research in infectious disease and infection control alongside global pharmaceutical companies and innovative SMEs. We have already worked closely with Janet and the iiCON team to deliver tailored accelerator programmes and secure investment for SMEs developing future therapies and solutions to prevent the spread of infection.

As a core partner, we’re excited to build on this collaboration, attracting greater private sector investment into the regional economy and supporting more SMEs to grow, scale, and bring impactful innovations to market.”

Founded in 2020 with a £18.6m Strength in Places Fund grant from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), iiCON has gone on to secure over £251 million in investment. It has created 770 North West jobs and helped to increase the region’s R&D infection spend to over £1billion since it launched five years ago.

Working with a global network of almost 1,000 organisations, iiCON enables industry access to world-leading infection R&D facilities and expertise. It has supported 36 new products to market, with over 5 billion units of life-saving products and treatments reaching communities across the world.

iiCON is currently developing the Liverpool Robotic Infection Research Laboratory, the UK’s first Category Three Robotic Infection laboratory at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where new technology is being leveraged to super-charge infection R&D in the Liverpool City Region.