Eli Lilly and Merck & Co. are partnering with Purdue University to launch the Young Institute Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Consortium aimed at pioneering new advances in how medicines are produced.
The newly formed group will focus on leveraging advanced pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes through innovative technologies, autonomous systems, and smart AI and digital technology, the group said in a Jan. 17 press release.
Additionally, the initiative said it was committed to “onshoring” drug manufacturing in the U.S. and bolstering domestic production.
No financial details of the collaboration were disclosed.
“Together, we will transform the industry with advanced aseptic manufacturing technologies, innovative research, and top-notch education and training to bring pharmaceutical sciences into the future with sterile processing standards,” Arup Roy, Ph.D., Lilly’s senior vice president, technical services and manufacturing science, said in the release.
Lilly and the university have a long relationship. Back in 2017, the pharma company shelled out $57 million to work on a series of projects that included the delivery of injectable pain meds (with fewer injections) and developing predictive models to lower R&D costs and better estimate how candidates will do in the clinic.
“Addressing pharma manufacturing challenges requires a significant advancement in technology,” Elizabeth Topp, director of the William D. and Sherry L. Young Institute for the Advanced Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals, said in the release. “The consortium will explore greater emphasis on both current and future advanced chemistries and accelerate research of innovative discoveries.”
Topp is a professor in Purdue’s Department of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics and the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering as well as an expert in improving the shelf-life and stability of pharmaceuticals.
Purdue’s colleges of engineering, pharmacy and science will also help support the initiative, the school said.
In late 2023, the biotech Amgen expanded its ongoing collaboration with Amazon Web Services to leverage its cloud platform to create generative AI in a bid to increase the manufacturing throughput of pharmaceuticals.