Research Aims
The PharmaSEL-Prosperity Partnership is an exciting interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from Imperial College London, University College London and Eli Lilly and Company, who are devising innovative and practical approaches for the manufacturing of medicines. Manufacturing and formulation can be a rate-limiting and costly step due to the difficulty in achieving the required molecular precision or yield in synthesis, in ensuring high yields during purification, and in producing final products with the stability and efficacy that maximise patient benefit. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industry is facing a drive to improve the economic and environmental performance of its manufacturing processes, which currently suffer from extremely low material efficiency, with factors of 0.01 to 0.1 not unusual , the production of a large amount of waste and a slow adoption of quality by design (QbD) concepts, especially for more complex products.
The aim of this programme is to radically improve the manufacturing processes through reduced production times, increased efficiency, improved process economics and enhanced drug quality, ultimately resulting in drugs that are more accessible to patients. The research programme is directed at addressing key questions in pharmaceutical process development from small molecules to emerging peptide drug, over the duration of five years.
The programme is delivered through five interrelated workpackages. The first four are focused on critical manufacturing operations, whilst the fifth will develop integrative systems methodologies that will underpin the entire programme aimed at making process development faster and cheaper, resulting in more accessible drugs for patients.
Please visit the page of each workpackage for a more detailed description of the five main reserach themes and projects within this research programme.
WP1 Drug substance synthesis
Researchers are aiming to radically improve the performance of drug substance synthesis, especially with respect to yield and material efficiency.
WP2 Drug substance crystallisation
Researchers are aiming to reduce the complexity and cost of developing crystallisation strategies for drug substance isolation and purification.
WP3 Drug substance purification
Researchers will develop alternative state-of-the-art methods of isolation and purification where crystallisation is not suitable.
WP4 Drug product manufacturing and stability
Researchers will aim to enable the first-time manufacturing of stable and effective drug products.
Underpinning methods for the design and control of innovative manufacturing processes
We will aim to develop systems-based reusable platform for the design, control and maintenance of new, high performance pharmaceutical processes.
