Consortium launched to grow research, innovation in biologics manufacturing

It forms part of the manufacturing goals in the Lion City.

Leading pharmaceutical firms and research communities from top universities in the Lion City partnered to form a consortium that will help develop research and innovation in biomanufacturing, the government announced.

In a joint statement, A*STAR, backed by the Economic Development Board, initiated the Biologics Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore consortium. The consortium includes the partnership of GSK, Sanofi, Takeda, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and its innovation and enterprise company, NTUitive, and Singapore Institute of Technology.

The consortium seeks to expand Singapore’s manufacturing capacities for biologics which include recombinant therapeutic proteins, and vaccines.

Aside from new technologies, the consortium will also improve efficiency and sustainability initiatives in the manufacturing space.

To do this, BioPIPS will have three workstreams:

• The Sensing and Modelling workstream aims to harness machine learning and

mechanistic modelling technologies, together with smart sensors, to enable

simplified and faster workflows. Data analytics will enable the effective translation

of process knowledge gained into performance improvements, which in turn

benefits the overall manufacturing process.

• The Sustainability workstream focuses on tackling sustainability challenges in

biologics and vaccines manufacturing, which typically utilises single-use

(disposable) equipment due to the extremely sterile environment needed for

product purity. This workstream will explore the use of novel materials and circular

economy approaches to address this challenge, as well as models to promote

more sustainable and resilient supply chains.

• The Compliant Agility workstream focuses on the removal of manual tasks to

achieve greater productivity in the manufacturing facilities while maintaining

compliance status, by using solutions like robotics and advanced analytics.