The consortium's three-year project, supported by Avecia and Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), aims to optimise manufacturing processes by identifying cost effective options that minimise capital investment and maximise asset utilisation, ensuring consistency, speeding development and reducing errors.
"Product development in this industry can take anything up to nine years," said project leader Andrew Sinclair, BioPharm's managing director and co-founder, who has over 25 years design experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, from the first recombinant insulin process through to large scale monoclonal antibody manufacturing.
"We are aware that many biopharmaceutical manufacturers are failing to capitalise on the benefits of experience gained both across and within projects."
Currently data on process, manufacturing, plant performance and costs all exist in isolation, he said.
The consortium is developing the knowledge database and the software platform that will allow scientists, engineers, business managers and marketing people to access and use the data to support business, manufacturing protocols, validation documentation, product data and all the other documentation needed to bring a product to market .
The amount of the grant has not been revealed but Sinclair was quick to point out that this is not just about technology, it is also about people, supply chain management, and organisational issues, such as inconsistencies in terminology and data representation.
UK biomanufacturers believe that the new software model will help to provide benchmarking of best practice and define a common terminology and methods of clearly identifying critical success factors.
