Arcinova has announced the award of a £1.5 million Innovate UK grant for the development of new flexible modular manufacturing technologies; a project which is set to demonstrate the operating feasibility of world first innovative continuous production tools.
The project, which will span a three-year period, will be undertaken in collaboration with a team led by Professor Mike George, with Professors Pete License and Sir Martyn Poliakoff at the University of Nottingham.
The aim of the project is to develop a continuous, flexible modular manufacturing technology platform which will enable Arcinova to handle increasingly complex chemistries with more subtle manufacturing steps.
The platform will be used in manufacturing operations where manufacturing inventories need to be kept low and product purity needs to be maximized, where manufacturing throughput and efficiency are maintained at a high level and equipment changeover can be rapidly facilitated to cope with low batch numbers.
The developed continuous modular manufacturing technology will be easily scalable, with a reduced manufacturing footprint when compared to more traditional, batch reactor approaches. The developed technologies will enable Arcinova to enhance manufacturing capacity and minimize inventories for highly reactive hazardous processes whereas for a batch process the reaction scale would be severely constrained.
The developed flexible modular manufacturing technology platform will enhance the existing infrastructure in GMP and non GMP assets, which include 5-litre and 20-litre GMP vessel streams, and build on its current capabilities in continuous processing technology.
“I have spent over 20 years championing the way that pharmaceuticals are manufactured in the UK and have been an enthusiastic advocate for new manufacturing technologies including continuous manufacturing and synthetic biology as enablers for new and radically different pharmaceutical production approaches.,” Ian Shott CBE, CEO of Arcinova said. “This focus on improving productivity is laid out in the 2017 whitepaper on UK Industrial Strategy. I was delighted to learn of our successful Innovate UK grant which will enable Arcinova to offer a compelling, innovative and simplified route to high grade pharmaceutical manufacture.”