OptiMed

“Accelerated Development of Pharmaceutical Processes Through Digitally Coupled Reaction Screening and Process Optimisation”
Dr Adam Clayton & Prof. Richard Bourne (Leeds), Prof. Alexei Lapkin (Cambridge), Prof. Anna Slater (Liverpool)
EP/Z531339/1

In pharmaceutical development, designing and refining chemical reactions for new drugs is often slow and resource-intensive, relying heavily on trial and error. Different stages of development—like library synthesis and process optimisation—are usually disconnected and don’t share information, which means each stage has to “reinvent the wheel”. To speed things up, we’re developing a connected network of automated reactors across multiple locations. These reactors will “talk” to each other and work together, using data and machine learning to optimise drug synthesis faster and more efficiently. The network will coordinate experiments across sites, collecting high-quality data from different types of reactors and stages in the drug development process. This allows each new round of experiments to build on data from previous ones, creating a continuous cycle of improvement. Our goal is to make drug development faster and more adaptable to new health challenges, while also paving the way for more sustainable and scalable manufacturing.