Project
Investigating and accelerating the development of processes to improve cost efficiencies and increase manufacturing capacity at Aesica’s Cramlington site.
Partners
Delivery
Aesica, the University of Durham and the University of Leeds were jointly awarded a METRC Innovation Award to investigate and accelerate the development of processes that will improve cost efficiencies and increase manufacturing capacity at its Cramlington site.
Aesica supplies contract development and contract manufacturing services for Formulated Products and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients to a host of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechnology organisations.
The company has established the Aesica Innovation Board (AIB) to identify and commercialise new innovative technologies that help to bridge the growing R&D gap and the company is actively targeting academia and innovative businesses to form development partnerships with.
This latest partnership builds on the successful collaboration with Bradford University. The new partnership with the University of Durham and the University of Leeds will be tasked with developing new or improved routes for the manufacture of an API. A detailed kinetic study is already underway and based on this, new flow processes will be developed before being scaled up at the Aesica Cramlington plant.
Impact
“Professor Andrew Whiting from Durham University and Professor Frans Muller from Leeds University will work together on a new collaborative METRC-funded project with the global pharmaceutical manufacturer, Aesica Pharmaceuticals. Alternative manufacturing processes will be investigated to increase the manufacturing capacity of the API, as well as exploring how to achieve cost efficiencies at the Aesica Cramlington site, in the North East of England. If, as expected, this joint collaboration leads to commercialisation of new processes, it would become a key partnership.”
Professor Steve Armes, Academic Director of METRC
Testimonial
“We are delighted to officially embark on this partnership with Andy at the University of Durham and Frans at the University of Leeds. Andy and Frans have been hugely supportive of the mandate of the Aesica Innovation Board: to bring together the best that industry and academia have to offer, in the interests of pharmaceutical innovation. The successful METRC application will allow us to invest in researching an improved manufacturing process, and critically, establish a successful model for future collaboration with Durham and Leeds universities.'”
Barrie Rhodes, Director of Technology Development, Aesica Pharmaceuticals