Shortly after finding success with a digital collaboration combining the expertise of universities and major pharma players like AstraZeneca and GSK, the United Kingdom’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) is plotting the next leg of its journey to help make medicines faster and at lower cost.
CPI is blueprinting a new cloud-first manufacturing facility at its Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre close to Glasgow, Scotland, which will use technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to hasten the production of new drugs, the organization said in a press release Tuesday.
The project’s alchemy of digital tech could help reduce operational costs for manufacturers by up to 30%, while also enabling greater agility to scale production and meet fluctuating demand for pharmaceuticals, CPI said in a release.
CPI was established by the U.K. government in 2004 in a bid to “connect the dots” between academia, investors and companies to “translate bright ideas and research into the marketplace.” The group aims to give its partners access to experts, equipment and funding to reduce the risks and costs associated with product development.
CPI’s new cloud-first manufacturing facility marks the latest evolution in the organization’s digital collaboration at the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, which includes academic institutions like the Universities of Cambridge and Strathclyde, plus drugmakers and industry players like AZ, GSK, Siemens, Thermo Fisher and others.
Earlier this year, the consortium of partners under CPI successfully built out digital architectures to track data “from the ground up” to help people or systems access information more effectively.
As part of the project, the partners created standardized digital solutions tailored for each step of drug development, CPI said in its release.
In the project’s second year, the digital consortium will turn its attention toward enhanced digital manufacturing for innovative therapies like RNA vaccines and cell and gene therapies. The group will also seek to tackle supply chain challenges more broadly, CPI said.
“By providing pharma companies with a real-life replicable model of a cloud-first manufacturing facility, we will drive forward the digital capability of pharma manufacturers,” Dave Berry, director of digital business systems at CPI, said in a statement. “We need to engage across pharma manufacturers of all scales if we are to realise the true potential of digitising medicines manufacturing.”
Aside from digital manufacturing innovation, CPI has multiple other production irons in the fire.
Last fall, for instance, the group opened the doors at its £26.4 million ($32 million) RNA Centre of Excellence in Darlington, U.K.
Aside from supporting the development and production of RNA products in early-stage clinical trials, the site also has the capability—in an emergency—to produce 100 million vaccines annually, CPI said in September.