ADDoPT: New £20.4M Project Set to Transform UK Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing

The ADDoPT consortium partners met for a project kick-off meeting at PSE’s Hammersmith offices on 15th January 2016 (Photo: Business Wire)

LONDON--()--A newly launched major collaborative project is set to transform the UK pharmaceutical industry by enabling the manufacturing processes of the innovative medicines of the future to be designed digitally.

The ADDoPT (Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics) project addresses a key challenge for the pharmaceutical industry; getting new innovative medicines to market in the quickest and most cost-effective way possible to ensure access for patients. The collaboration will pursue this goal by developing and implementing advanced digital design techniques that eliminate non-viable drug candidate formulations as early as possible, streamlining design, development and manufacturing processes.

‘Digital design’ combines research insight and mechanistic modelling to provide links between raw materials, formulation, manufacturing processes and drug product quality. It spans all operations, processes and procedures during the development and manufacture of medicines, and their in vivo application.

Alison Clough, Acting Chief Executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, commented,

“We welcome the Government’s commitment to continuing to develop the UK’s life sciences sector. This project will help to put the UK in a position to make innovative medicines available to UK patients more quickly by futureproofing our advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. By reducing the risks associated with the manufacture of medicines we can provide the UK with a competitive advantage in a globally significant sector.”

ADDoPT is a four-year collaboration between government, industry and academia. Led by Process Systems Enterprise and supported by the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP), it involves pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb, as well as leading UK universities, research centres, and knowledge-driven technology SMEs.

MMIP is a partnership set up jointly by ABPI and the BioIndustry Association (BIA). BIA Chief Executive, Steve Bates, said,

“This is a great result for UK medicines manufacturing and I look forward to seeing the new technology being applied to biologics so that we can continue to address unmet patient need with the most innovatively designed and effective treatments possible.”

ADDoPT builds on UK excellence in big data, mechanistic modelling, process optimisation and control to establish a highly competitive UK knowledge value supply chain for the pharmaceutical sector that will seek to:

  • protect UK drug manufacturing and support future growth
  • encourage reshoring of existing pharmaceutical production
  • contribute to job creation and safeguarding in the pharmaceutical supply chain
  • enhance UK skills and capabilities through the training of operators and scientists in new design and control tools and methodologies
  • get new innovative medicines to market as efficiently as possible to ensure access for patients.

Project Lead Sean Bermingham of Process Systems Enterprise Limited said,

“By building on UK excellence in process modelling, optimisation and control, we can give UK pharmaceutical development and manufacturing a genuine competitive advantage in this globally significant sector.

[ENDS]

Information for editors : http://www.psenterprise.com/news/pr160128.html

Contacts

For ADDoPT
Sean Bermingham
Telephone 020 8563 6235
Email s.bermingham@psenterprise.com

Release Summary

ADDoPT, a newly launched collaborative project is set to transform the UK pharmaceutical industry by enabling manufacturing processes of innovative medicines of the future to be designed digitally.

Contacts

For ADDoPT
Sean Bermingham
Telephone 020 8563 6235
Email s.bermingham@psenterprise.com