ADDoPT (Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics)
In 2015 we joined ADDoPT, a 4 year £20.4 million collaborative project between government, pharmaceutical companies, SME's and academia.1
The project aimed to address a key challenge for the pharmaceutical industry; getting new innovative medicines to patients in the quickest and most cost-effective way possible.1
The consortium hoped to achieve this goal by exploring how current and new ‘Digital Design’ techniques can be used, such as predictive modeling, which can then be applied and used within research, development and manufacturing workflows to eliminate non-viable medicine candidate formulations as early as possible, thereby enhancing decision making and accelerating development.1
It set an ambition to be able to create ‘virtual medicine manufacturing systems’ to test effectiveness and efficiencies before creating them in the real world.2
The project was part-funded under the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chains Initiative (AMSCI) and supported by the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP). Each of the 4 pharmaceutical companies involved (AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GSK and Pfizer) are providing industrial case studies to help with continuous improvement of the digital design tools and methodologies.3
“This collaborative project is a great example of how partnership between industry, government and academia can lead to better potential outcomes for patients.”
In March 2019, the ADDoPT project team hosted a major international showcase event. This event demonstrated the range of industry-ready new models, tools and approaches for digital design and operation of drug manufacturing processes and product performance arising from this major UK collaborative project.4
Bringing together a wide range of predictive models and insight from industrial case studies, the ADDoPT Digital Design Showcase has demonstrated real-world business benefits including:4
Better and much earlier understanding of development risks
Better decision making and resource prioritisation
More targeted and efficient experimentation
Accelerated product development
Better design and scale-up for robust products and processes
The project has proven that close collaboration between government, industry and academia really can work, and we hope that the ‘Digital Design’ techniques can be refined and implemented further, so that patients gain access to much needed medicines faster in the future.
OUR SCIENCE
In 2019, we began a partnership with the University of Cambridge on an AI (artificial intelligence) driven project to help predict how certain chemicals will react with each other.
OUR SCIENCE
We were part of a collaboration that aimed to speed up the exome sequencing of 500,000 UK participants.
References
Science and Technology Facilities Council. Hartree Centre in £20.4m collaboration. Jan 2016. Accessed Nov 2024.
European Pharmaceutical Review. Digital design for pharmaceutical product and process development. July 2019. Accessed Nov 2024.
ADDoPT. About ADDoPT. Accessed Nov 2024.
ADDoPT. ADDoPT Digital Design Showcase. Mar 2019. Accessed Nov 2024.