PACE Interim Impact Report

PACE (Pathways to Antimicrobial Clinical Efficacy) is a £30 million initiative supporting and funding early-stage innovation in medicines and diagnostics, aimed at tackling AMR. It was established in September 2023 and is a collaboration between Innovate UK (IUK), LifeArc, and Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) - three leaders in the UK's health innovation and research community.

PACE brings together the funding, resources, and partnerships to help innovators progress their early-stage antimicrobial drug and diagnostics projects with greater speed, support and confidence - giving the best AMR innovations the greatest chance of success. PACE will create a path to value through 3 strategic goals which will be underpinned by effective programme management and delivery:

Grow a pipeline of high-quality antimicrobial drugs and associated diagnostics aligned with unmet needs and route to patient impact.

Provide innovative researchers in Academia and SMEs located globally the funding, advice and support they need to build de-risked and investment ready assets

Convene collaboration network(s) to identify barriers to innovation, advance programmes and drive new collaborative R&D.

It is a requirement of MDC's grant funding agreement with Innovate UK and LifeArc that the outcomes and long-term impacts of PACE activities are assessed at key time points throughout the programme's timeline. The PACE programme is funded for an initial term of five years and as of April 2026 will reach its midway point in this funding cycle and so there is a need to conduct an interim review of progress towards expected outcomes.

Findings from this interim review will directly inform programme refinement. Key to this will be the opportunity to gather feedback and learning from Round 1 beneficiaries and partners on the PACE Academy, the project management process, and the use of Enabling projects so far. It will also allow the programme to capture the experiences of beneficiaries from Round 2 to date. This will provide learning in how best to support the Round 2 beneficiaries and for the future Round 3 of funding which will be targeted at a second group of therapeutic companies. It is expected that findings from the interim review will directly inform the need and shape for PACE beyond the first 5 - year funded term.

The PACE programme is now looking for an external provider to develop and produce an interim impact review and report (that will build upon the existing baseline impact study completed in June 2025) to understand how key activities are progressing towards expected outcomes which can be compared to the findings from the baseline study and at the endline stage.

The overall purpose of the impact evaluation and this interim review is to be able to assess the impact of PACE on the AMR drug development ecosystem and on the development of drugs and diagnostics.