UK to set up personalised meds focused manufacturing tech test centre

10-Jul-2014 - Last updated on 11-Jul-2014 at 11:07 GMT

A new UK “biologics facility of the future” (FoF) testing centre will let biopharma tech firms develop smaller-scale manufacturing systems for personalised medicine production according to the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI).

The new £20m ($34.2m) centre will be located next to the National Biologics Manufacturing Centre being built in Darlington, however, it is primarily intended as a site where tech firms can work out how to link up systems for small scale production runs according to spokesman, Jonathan Robinson.

He told BioPharma-Reporter.com that: “The NBMC will focus on advancing discrete promising technologies that can help address the challenges in biopharma now and in the future, whereas the FoF will focus on integrating some of these technologies in to a small format processing unit.”

The idea, Robinson continued, is to develop systems “that can address the requirements of the future medicine supply chain, which are provision of a diverse range of small lots of biologics for individual patient cohorts as with stratified medicine and bespoke medicines in the case of personalised medicine.”

However, the CPI does plan to involve biopharmaceutical firms, service providers and other stakeholders in due course, Robinson said.

“In the first instance, we are interested in working with the equipment and consumable providers, both large and small to develop the new processing format, however as prototypes become available it will be necessary to test and develop the prototypes with end users, which could be pharma, CMOs through to healthcare providers.”

To access the centre, which is due to be up and running in 2018, manufacturing technology firms can either bid for public/private projects or pay a fee according to Robinson.

“The CPI is very flexible in how we engage with businesses and academics, the priority is to develop and gain adoption of new beneficial technologies.”

News of the new centre comes a few weeks after plans for a Government-back cell therapy development unit Guy’s Hospital were unveiled.

It also follows just days after the CPI unveiled an industry co-funded £14.4m ($24.7m) plan to establish a formulation development centre.

However, according to the CPI director of formulation Keith Robson work at the centre “won't involve pharmaceuticals initially, the focus will be on coatings, inks, composites, and powders.”