Image Credit: UKRI

CMAC are delighted to announce a new £5M award from EPSRC to establish and lead the new Made Smarter Innovation - Digital Medicines Manufacturing Research Centre (DM²). This award continues to build CMAC’s research portfolio and is part of the UKRI and Made Smarter Innovation £53 million investment in smart manufacturing and connected supply chain research and innovation.

DM² is led by the University of Strathclyde (CMAC) in partnership with Loughborough and Cambridge Universities and is supported by a vibrant consortium of 28 project partners from across specialty pharma, digital software and hardware providers, robotics, simulation tools and pharmaceutical technology.  The collaborating partners are contributing over £2.9M to co-create and co-deliver the research. The Centre’s goal is to accelerate the adoption of industry digital technologies (IDTs) across the pharma sector and transform data driven medicines development and manufacture. The Centre will address patient needs through establishing a foundational data platform, autonomous robotic oral medicine development and manufacturing system, a revolutionary digital quality control (QC) capability, investigate on demand patient-centric supply and develop and empower the digitally literate workforce of the future.

Prof Alastair Florence, PI of the DM² Research Centre said: “This fantastic news allows us to address key challenges in the digitalisation of medicines development, manufacture and supply. We aim to unleash the potential impact of IDTs across the value chain to dramatically reduce waste, lead times and quality control costs, increase productivity and enhance the agility and efficiency of clinical trial supply chains, vital to the introduction of new therapies. Our impact focussed programme will benefit not only manufacturing industry and healthcare providers but also, ultimately, patients.”

“These ambitious targets demand a transformation in the way that data across pharma's supply chain are captured, stored, shared, processed, modelled and used.  The integrated research test beds in DM² will connect data, IDTs and drug product manufacturing processes to deliver this transformation.”

The Research Centre will also work with the community to drive the cultural change and skills development required to support IDT adoption. Prof Florence explained “The award will support the DM² network to engage users in all stages of research, showcase the value of data and IDTs and encourage innovation. Working with stakeholders we will identify training needs to drive data literacy and enable the future, augmented workforce that trust data and IDTs and convert data into knowledge into action.”

The team working with the PI to deliver the DM² Research Centre aims include the Industry Engagement Lead, Massimo Bresciani and Platform leads Prof Blair Johnston, Dr Daniel Markl and Dr Andrea Johnston (Strathclyde), Dr Brahim Benyahia (Loughborough) and Dr Jag Srai (Cambridge).

For more information and to find out how to engage with the programme, please contact Prof Alastair Florence: alastair.florence@strath.ac.uk.

Further information on the scheme:

The Made Smarter Innovation - Digital Medicines Manufacturing Research Centre is one of 5 University led research centres that will receive a share of £25 million to help the UK’s manufacturing industry become more productive and competitive through innovation and adoption of digital technologies. As well as being at the forefront and driving developments in their areas of expertise, these research centres will connect across the challenge to help bridge the gap between basic research and its application in manufacturing to provide a pipeline of digital technologies for the future.

New £53 million funding for UK manufacturers to boost competitiveness through digital tech - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

https://www.ukri.org/news/funding-awarded-to-boost-uk-manufacturing-supply-chains/

https://www.strath.ac.uk/whystrathclyde/news/strathclydepartnersintwonewukmanufacturingresearchcentres/