A new major collaborative project is set to transform the UK pharmaceutical industry by enabling the manufacturing processes of the innovative medicines of the future to be designed digitally. The STFC Hartree Centre is a partner in the £20.4m ADDoPT (Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics) project, which involves major pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
We are extremely excited to be working with our major industrial project partners, as they seek to make innovative and more sophisticated medicines available to patients quicker and more cost effectively. Big data is an essential ingredient in the design and development of our society’s next generation of medicines, taking time and money out of the innovation process. The Hartree Centre’s world leading facilities and skills in data analytics and modelling are pivotal to the success of this project, which will secure the UK’s position at the forefront of new drug development.”
A four-year collaboration between government, industry and academia, the project addresses a key challenge for the pharmaceuticals industry; getting new innovative medicines to market in the quickest and most cost-effective way possible to ensure access for patients. It will achieve this by developing advanced digital design techniques that that eliminate non-viable drug candidate formulations as early as possible, streamlining design, development and manufacturing processes.
Part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, and located at Sci-Tech Daresbury in Cheshire, the Hartree Centre’s world leading supercomputing facilities and expertise in big data analytics and computational chemistry will be applied to case studies, provided by the industrial pharmaceutical project partners, to achieve better design and predictive processes for innovative medicines.
Hartree Centre Business Development Manager for Life Sciences, Dr Adrian Toland, said: “The medicines industry is a major component of UK manufacturing sector with a turnover in excess of £31bn. The industry’s sustainability and future growth will be enhanced by responding to drivers such as the increasing demand for personalised medicines.
