Collaborating with industry and academia to transform pharmaceutical development

The CMAC Future Manufacturing Research Hub is an internationally leading research centre working in partnership with industry to transform current pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.

CMAC intends to build on their 10 years of success by co-creating and delivering new science-based, innovative processes and digital technologies that will enable advanced science and technology to transform the product and process development of medicine manufacturing.

The hub is based within the Innovation District’s Technology and Innovation Centre, which is the prime location to take advantage of the outstanding expertise within industry and academia. In 2013, CMAC received £34.2m for capital investment from UK-RPIF scheme and they’ve continued to grow since. Set in a state-of-the-art 900 m² laboratory, CMAC is a fully adaptable space with facilities for multi-phase batch and continuous primary processing, materials characterisation, process and product analysis and X-Ray imaging.

The hub also offers outstanding skills development and innovative training programmes that directly address the challenges within pharmaceutical manufacturing, ensuring their staff and researchers are the best within their field.

They offer PhD and post-doctoral research opportunities, where students benefit from support from internationally leading supervisors, expert industry practitioners and thought leaders through their established Industrial Mentor scheme. The programme allows students to access industrial analytical equipment and attend placements within operational companies, giving them real-world experience. CMAC is focused on ensuring graduates smoothly transition into industry or further academia.

 

CMAC feeds into the six strategic Clusters at The University of Strathclyde as part of the broader GCID programme for the Strathclyde campus.

We're continuing to grow within the District, with ambitious expansion plans of the current facilities in the Technology and Innovation Centre, CMAC will also have a presence in the new TIC East building to specifically enhance our researcher training programmes. This will include wet labs, powder handling labs and a digital teaching space.

Thomas McGlone, Technical Operations Manager, CMAC

CMAC continues to tackle real-world problems alongside industry partners such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer. They’ve had great success in collaboration projects with large pharmaceutical corporations, technology SME’s and academia. One such project saw CMAC partner with billion-dollar pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to look at techniques for the isolation of peptide-based systems and accelerate product development. Their research saw them reduce overall cycle time by up to 40% for the drug product process, support process implementation for novel (bio-) pharmaceutical systems and provide new ideas that will be used for product evaluation and early process development.

CMAC’s continued work with industry and academia is a great addition to the Innovation District and wider innovation ecosystem. They are continuing to grow their experienced team and expand into new collaborations with business, ensuring they move towards their goal of becoming a global leading research centre, transforming medicine development, manufacture, and supply.