Advanced Material Development (AMD) is working with a team of US pharmaceutical scientists to develop new ways of producing and delivering drug to patients, including via 3D printing personalised medicines.
The collaboration, which builds on an ongoing partnership between AMD and The University of Texas at Austin focused on pharmaceutical nanotechnology, seeks to develop methods to make drugs more soluble and usable.
AMD led a funding round for two projects, one of which expands into the current fight against viral pathogens like COVID-19.
The collaboration is formalised in a venture called Continuous Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals and 3D Printing Dosage Forms, known as CoM3D.
“CoM3D builds on the mission of creating innovations while helping people. Dealing with medicines and improving their physical properties for better efficiency and patient compliance ticks both boxes,” said Austin pharmacy assistant professor Mo Maniruzzaman, who heads a newly-developed pharmaceutical engineering and 3D printing labs at the university.
“This wouldn’t be possible without enormous support from AMD and the CoM3D team led by John Lee and Dr Anthony Thompson, as well as my tireless research team. It becomes so rewarding when visions are co-shared between academia and industry to reach a milestone.”
Maniruzzaman previously worked with AMD when he was at the University of Sussex, one of the company's other university partnerships.
Dr Anthony Thomson, who is CEO of CoM3D and sits on AMD's advisory panel, said: “Major trends influencing the future of healthcare include: patient-centricity, digital health, precision medicine, complexity, democratization and an ever-increasing focus on cost.
“CoM3D is focused on developing platform technologies to address these trends in healthcare and building a team that can effectively commercialize these technologies with proven business models which will drive scale. This is an exciting time to be in the healthcare sector with renewed focus on infectious disease and the therapeutics and vaccines needed to control and protect our growing population having never been in greater need.”