Discover how we are enhancing skills and training opportunities across medicines manufacturing.
What is the Industry Skills Accelerator?
The Industry Skills Accelerator (ISA) is a national initiative designed to strengthen the UK’s medicines manufacturing workforce. Launched in August 2024, the ISA is funded by Innovate UK and delivered through a partnership between Cogent Skills, the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult), and CPI (part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult).
Focused on advanced therapies and complex medicines – including cell, gene, vaccines, biologics, and other high potential modalities such as mRNA and Oligonucleotides. The ISA is building targeted training solutions to meet the evolving needs of this fast-moving sector.
Why was the Industry Skills Accelerator created?
Through its leadership of the Advanced Therapies Apprenticeship Community (ATAC), CGT Catapult supports a UK-wide network of training providers and employers. Based on insights from the 2023 Skills Demand Survey and 2025 Workforce Foresighting research, CGT Catapult identified urgent skills gaps across:
• Manufacturing
• Quality
• Digital
• Automation
In response, the ISA brings together key industry stakeholders and leading education providers to co-develop apprenticeship pathways and specialist training programmes (including a new route in Complex Medicines such as mRNA and Oligonucleotides), ensuring the sector is equipped for future growth.
What the ISA aims to achieve
Addressing Skills Gaps
Supporting lifelong learning
Sector collaboration
Programmes within the Industry Skills Accelerator
The Industry Skills Accelerator is developing a suite of apprenticeship programmes designed to meet the skills needs of the medicines manufacturing sector, with particular relevance to advanced, complex and emerging therapies such as cell, gene, mRNA, and oligonucleotide-based medicines, as well as more traditional biologics.
Apprenticeship programmes in development include:
LEVEL 3 DATA TECHNICIAN (CITIZEN)
LEVEL 4 PROCESS LEADER
LEVEL 5 IMPROVEMENT SPECIALIST
LEVEL 5 DATA ENGINEER
LEVEL 6 DATA SCIENTIST
LEVEL 6 IMPROVEMENT LEADER
These programmes have been selected in collaboration with industry to reflect high-priority areas including data, process optimisation, and quality control and assurance.
In addition to the core training, learners will benefit from a schedule of enrichment activities and networking opportunities. These will be tailored to the specific challenges and innovations within each medicine modality (including cell, gene, mRNA and oligonucleotides), supporting real-world context, collaboration, and sector awareness.
You can find out more about each of these programmes by clicking the programme name in the diagram below.
Our Programme Pathways
The diagram below shows our programme pathways. You can click on individual programme names to be taken to a page where you can view the full information for that programme.