Quotient Sciences completes major expansion of drug substance manufacturing facility
Quotient Sciences, the drug development and manufacturing accelerator, has completed the expansion of its drug substance manufacturing facility at Alnwick in the UK. The £6 million project results in a state-of-the-art drug substance manufacturing capability that can deliver integrated support for customers from candidate selection through to early clinical development and beyond.
The expansion delivers multipurpose capacity of up to 15 GMP reactor streams with reactor volumes ranging from 5 liters up to 150 liters and tactical deployment of batch or continuous flow chemistry technologies to optimize drug substance manufacturing processes. The facility has been designed adopting Industry 4.0 principles, with the inclusion of a predictive process control system (PharmaMV) improving the transfer from small-scale process research and development (PR&D) into manufacture of multi-kilogram quantities of drug substance for clinical use.
Mark Egerton, PhD, CEO of Quotient Sciences, said: “Since acquiring the Alnwick facility in 2021, our objective has been to incorporate drug substance services into our integrated Translational Pharmaceutics® platform combining drug product manufacturing and clinical testing. By working with customers at the point of candidate nomination, we can now design the most streamlined programs and significantly accelerate their development timelines.”
Quotient Sciences Alnwick currently employs 200 people across a range of scientific disciplines, including process chemistry, solid-state characterization, radiosynthesis, bioanalysis, and formulation development. The company will continue to expand its capabilities, capacity, and headcount at the site to meet the growing demand for outsourced development and manufacturing services. In 2021, the site was presented an award for “Most Inspirational North East (UK) Science Employer” from STEM Learning as part of the STEM Ambassadors program.
