The Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation

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Drug Formulation Design

This research is focused on the development of novel drug delivery and formulation systems to create new medicines through rational prediction of performance, based on powerful computational and artificial intelligence procedures.

IPI research is demonstrating that many of the conventional stages in the drug development process can be streamlined or substituted by ‘in-silico’ (computational) procedures, resulting in significant cost reduction and accelerating the time for novel therapies to reach the market. The IPI draws on international research in particle design, crystal engineering, computational solid-state pharmaceutics, rational drug design and process analytics. These groups have enjoyed considerable commercial success including the highly successful spin-out companies Bradford Particle Design (the highest value UK University spin-out; now Nektar Therapeutics), and Advanced Gel Technology.

The IPI is also the hub of the Artificial Intelligence Interest Group (formerly PROFITS – PROduct Formulation using InTelligent Software), an international consortium of multinational and regional pharmaceutical companies, working together with IPI computational formulation scientists to exploit artificial intelligence in optimising drug development and manufacturing.