Sight-threatening diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and macular oedema effect the central vision of over 1.0 million people in the UK and millions more across the world. These diseases can lead to blindness, impacting upon the quality of life of the elderly and vulnerable and imposing a significant healthcare burden due to treatment costs (NHS £475 million/year) and associated injuries (NHS cost estimate £500 million/year). Vision deterioration is due to the unregulated growth and leakage of blood vessels beneath or within the retina leading to fluid build-up and swelling in the central region or macula. Current therapies employ drugs that turn off a master switch called VEGF that drives blood vessel growth and leakage (anti-VEGFs) and that are injected into patients' eyes on a monthly basis. Anti-VEGFs have succeeded in stopping vision decline and have improved vision significantly in about a third of patients, although these vision gains are lost after several years of treatment. Therefore, new therapies that enhance treatment outcomes by improving vision for longer while reducing the number of injections per year are urgently needed. This proposal is seeking funding for a collaborative project between Vasgen and the Centre for Process Innovation to develop a new therapy in readiness for human trials. Vasgen is developing a monoclonal antibody medicine that blocks the biological function of a molecular scissor called ADAM15. ADAM15, like VEGF, promotes blood vessel growth and leakage but does so via an independent mechanism. Vasgen's preliminary studies using proto-type drugs in models of disease suggest that blocking ADAM15's activity could lead to a superior therapy. Vasgen now seeks to develop a clinical trial-ready drug candidate in the current project in preparation for future clinical trials. It is envisaged that our company's new therapy can exceed the performance of existing treatments improving vision in more patients either when used alone or when combined with existing anti-VEGF drugs. This should in the long term lead to reduced costs borne by the NHS and other payers, while increasing the quality of life of patients.
Biomass found in the waste supply chain is one of the UK's largest indigeneous unexploited sources of raw material upon which new industries and technologies can be developed. This project takes waste biomass from a UK waste transfer station and, through a combination of physical, thermal, biological and chemical processes, transforms it into high value chemicals that we rely on everyday e.g. plastics, paints, clothing. The data generated in this project will form the basis of the first commercial facility, planned in the UK for 2016. This project brings together leading blue chip companies from the waste and chemicals sectors and forms a unique supply chain that could put the UK at the front of the race to establish commercial scale high value renewable chemical production.
PEMBA refers to a collaborative project to develop a transparent coating to improve moisture barrier resistance directly on top of a perovskite-on-silicon (PoS) tandem photovoltaic (PV) device, between Oxford Photovoltaics Ltd and the Centre for Process Innovation Ltd. The main purpose of this work is to extend the lifetime of the PoS wafer and in turn, enhance its performance when employed in the field as a solar module. The use of an atomic layer deposition batch coating tool will be investigated to create a uniform and conformal coating directly over the PV device. In addition to the experimental work, an exercise in defining how to scale up this solution to meet the demands of PV wafer fabricators, who require throughputs of 4000wafers per hour, will also be conducted.
"Technology continues to become increasingly personal and is now being worn on the body, such as on the wrist, helping to track and improve our health. Current wearable technology has three key limitations: the type of data it can gather on our health, lack of real-time collection of such data and these devices are often an extra bulky accessory that people eventually are unwilling to use.
This feasibility project led by Continuum Technologies and working with CPI, a HVM Catapult partner, will produce a highly sensitive fabric for smart clothing using graphene embedded into textile fibres to enable real-time performance and health monitoring."
Our project, Novel Biocatalysts for Sustainable Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals, is developing a greener, safer way to produce important pharmaceutical chemicals. Traditional chemical processes for adding nitro groups to molecules require harsh conditions and generate hazardous waste. We are replacing these methods with enzymes called nitrating cytochrome P450s (NCP450s), which can perform the same transformations under mild, water-based conditions.
A key challenge is producing these enzymes consistently at high quality. The enzymes need a molecule called heme to function properly, and standard production methods can result in a mixture of active and inactive proteins. This variability makes it difficult to scale up the process for industrial use.
To solve this, we are working with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) to identify the best microbial hosts for producing fully functional NCP450 enzymes. By testing different bacteria, including specially engineered E. coli strains and naturally heme-producing species, we aim to find a system that reliably produces large amounts of active enzyme. This will ensure our biocatalysts perform consistently and can be scaled up safely and efficiently.
The project will generate new knowledge about which microbes are best suited for producing these enzymes, develop methods to measure enzyme quality accurately, and provide practical guidance for industrial use. These outputs will strengthen our existing programme, support regulatory compliance, and accelerate the adoption of environmentally friendly manufacturing processes in the pharmaceutical industry.
By overcoming this bottleneck, our work will help make pharmaceutical manufacturing safer, more sustainable, and less wasteful, supporting the UK's leadership in green biomanufacturing and innovation.
As AMM therapies become more mainstream, conventional measurement and analysis technologies are increasingly pushed beyond their traditional usage boundaries. LiquiSensor is an emerging technology with strong potential for pharmaceutical process monitoring, but its current implementation presents challenges in this new field. Personalised medicine relies on very small sample volumes that are highly sensitive to intrusive measurement methods.
Further development is required to refine energy delivery and safeguard sensitive samples.
To pursue this application further we would need support from our delivery partner, CPI, in some key areas:
* Access to materials we can measure, either medicines or analogous materials.
* Re-simulation of heat transfer mechanisms to ensure the samples effective temperature control parameters are met.
* Understanding data capture, presentation and accuracy requirements in exemplar applications including continuous versus static measurements
With this level of external support, the additional work done within the company would be as follows:
* Optimise the design based on the re-simulation exercise
* Testing of therapeutic samples supplied by partner
* Software adjustments to deliver data presentation requirements
This product extension would extend the applicability of the technology into new markets, such as personalised medicine, significantly broadening future use cases without duplicating current project activities
Self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) is a new class of therapeutic RNA which offers major sustainability benefits compared with conventional RNA, including higher potency and substantially reduced dose requirements. This supports greener manufacturing and lowers resource use across production, storage, and administration. However, these same properties mean that assays routinely applied to measure mRNA potency, transfection, and biological activity are not directly applicable to saRNA. Despite progress achieved via the Intracellular Drug Delivery Centre (IDDC), current assay platforms have proven insufficiently sensitive or poorly predictive for these next-generation RNA formats. This lack of suitable assays to measure important properties of saRNA creates a barrier that slows development, translation, and adoption of saRNA therapies and other similar technologies, limiting the ability of SMEs and academic innovators to fully realise their potential. Working together on this project, CPI and Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) will develop improved assays for saRNA (and generally applicable to highly potent RNA payloads) which will be made available to developers of nucleic acid vaccines and medicines to aid development and more rapidly advance these emerging therapeutic modalities and make them available to patients.
The pilot Centre of Expertise for Advanced Materials and Sustainability (CEAMS) (formerly Sustainable Materials Translational Research Centre (SMTRC)) is a collaboration funded by the Innovation Accelerator (IA) programme (2023-2025) via Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Innovate UK (IUK). It is led by major regional and national stakeholders in material science research and innovation and builds upon Greater Manchester's expertise in advanced materials in support of the growing adoption and scaling of sustainable materials and products.
CEAMS is being delivered as part of Innovation Accelerator programme (2023-2025), to support the development of sustainable materials and products. This builds on Greater Manchester's leadership in advanced materials and is being delivered in partnership with leading national organisations in material science.
To date, the consortium has delivered projects to companies (of which 25 are SMEs), across a wide range of sectors, with strategic themes emerging in sustainability, circularity and clean energy. New capabilities have been developed to address industrial challenges, from the identification of sustainable replacement polymers for corrosion resistant pipes to the development of coatings for sustainable ceramics and the recycling of carbon fibre and other complex products. The consortium has expanded GM innovation capacity via new job creation as well as developing new processes to work together effectively and efficiently to deliver to stakeholders, including common business development activities, a single front door, and jointly delivered projects across multiple centres.
This will be a direct and enhanced continuation of CEAMS (with some focusing of project partners), with delivery of new translational R&D projects primarily with SMEs across Greater Manchester that align to the key areas for CEAMS's long-term future, and at least three technology development projects and two grand challenge projects that address industrial challenges related to sustainability, e.g. supply chain circularity.
ErebaGen harnesses chemistry from Nature and its project aims to transform hazardous chemical manufacture through the use of sustainable biological processes. The innovation focus and need is aromatic nitration, a critical chemical step in production of numerous pharmaceutical intermediates. This reaction proceeds rapidly, generates heat, can get out of control risking explosion and formation of unwanted by-products. The process uses hazardous chemicals such as concentrated acid, with associated risks of disposal or leaching. Despite this ~20% of all synthetic pharmaceutical intermediate processes involve nitration. Consequently many are produced abroad, or by multi-step synthetic routes to avoid nitration, increasing cost and time.
ErebaGen is responding to the need using our innovative technology platform that harnesses bacterial enzymes evolved by nature over millions of years. Distinctively ErebaGen uses a patented activator to switch on specialised metabolism, that is the synthetic processes not required for survival of the microbes.. This gives ErebaGen a competitive advantage: access to a large, chemically diverse, promiscuous pool of enzymes with flexible substrate tolerance. It is combined with bioinformatics, genomic and chemical analysis and automation. The intellectual property comprises the patented activator and substantial confidential know-how including proprietary software
Customers are pharma/biotech companies but our innovations have broad application in agrochemicals, flavours and fragrances, dyes and fine chemicals; the project could open up these markets. ErebaGen's approach can be expanded to a range of other hazardous/inefficient chemical processes.
The project brings together a diverse, experienced team from Erebagen, partner CPI and subcontractors National Physical Laboratory, Peritus Regulatory and Sterling Pharma, plus individual experts. We have a two year project plan to demonstrate that enzymatic aromatic nitration is a cost-effective, sustainable alternative to chemical nitration. Performance measurements and comparative assessment will assess this potentially transformational alternative to traditional synthesis. The project deliverables will help ErebaGen secure higher value partnerships, which will take its innovation through to market.
Traditional sunscreen formulations are highly effective for the prevention of skin cancer (the 5th most common cancer in the UK). However, the UV protective active ingredients used in their formulations have a number of health and environmental issues. Some sunscreen actives can absorb into the skin, leading to hormone disruption and skin sensitivity issues. Some form a white cast on the skin and cause skin dryness and discomfort. Sunscreen actives also cause significant damage to marine and aquatic environments, where they build up in species resulting in endocrine disruption and the bleaching of corals. There is a need for alternative ingredients for safe and effective sunscreen formulations.
Mycosporines and mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs) are UV absorbing molecules found mostly in marine organisms and present a non-toxic bioalternative to traditional sunscreen actives. However, current MAA extraction methods are laborious, expensive and damaging to marine biodiversity, severely limiting their use in mainstream applications.
Bio-based manufacturing using microorganisms offers a sustainable alternative to environmentally detrimental extraction as well as capital-intensive chemical manufacturing. However, the development of suitable host strains required for industrial scale biomanufacturing is often slow and expensive.
Twig Bio are pioneering the development of a lab automation platform with machine learning to expedite the R&D process for strain development. This relies on increased automation using data driven insights applied to the strain development process, enabling the rapid development of highly productive commercially viable strains. In this Innovate UK funded project, Twig Bio's approach will be applied to develop strains for biomanufacturing production of MAAs for use in sunscreens. Twig Bio will collaborate with experts from the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) to develop and scale-up for commercial scale biomanufacturer of MAAs as high-performance sustainable suncare active ingredients.
Therapeutic peptides are set to dominate the top-selling drugs list over the next decade. Incretin mimetics such as Semaglutide (brand names Ozempic/Wegovy/Rybelsus) and Tirzepatide (brand names Zepbound/Mounjaro) are projected to make up 5 of the top 10 selling drugs by 2030, with combined sales of $116Bn. Each of these active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) incorporates non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs), which are crucial for their therapeutic efficacy, but also prevent their biomanufacturing by conventional recombinant technology. Instead, manufacturers must use chemical synthesis methods with significant challenges for sustainability (due large quantities of harmful solvent waste) and production at scale (due to high capital investment required and rapid growth in demand).
Constructive Bio has pioneered an innovative and environmentally friendly method for biomanufacturing therapeutic peptides incorporating ncAAs, leveraging the power of genetic code expansion. This cutting-edge approach involves expanding the repertoire of genetically encoded amino acids to incorporate novel, pharmacologically relevant chemistries.
In this project, we will work in collaboration with CPI to develop reagents and production strains for a panel of 5 GLP-1 agonist strains before selecting one for proof-of-concept scale-up to fermentation in 100L tanks with a full product quality benchmarking dataset. This will demonstrate the potential for biomanufacturing methods to replace chemical synthesis methods and pave the way for a more sustainable and scalable peptide manufacturing industry.
While single-use (SU) systems offer flexibility and reduce the reliance on solvents and steam, they generate approximately 30,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually---a figure expected to double by 2026\. This significant environmental impact underscores the necessity for innovative solutions that maintain the benefits of SU systems while substantially reducing their carbon footprint. Project Nexus brings together expertise in advanced manufacturing automation, digital design and optimisation, material innovation and bioprocessing to pioneer the additive manufacturing (AM) of bioreactors at scale, offering a greener and more efficient alternative to SU bioreactors with improved circularity and end-of-life pathways, all while retaining the flexibility of disposable systems. Nexus will pioneer the design and manufacture of new bioreactors using AM and bio-based, eco-friendly materials. The bioreactors will be tested for applications in pharmaceuticals R&D and point-of-care manufacture as primary applications. We will also explore avenues for reusing them in industrial biotechnology, e.g. to produce green chemicals. The Nexus team will integrate a rigorous analysis of the technical, economic and environmental impact of the bioreactors, their manufacture and end-of-life disposal to demonstrate the benefits of a transition to AM.
Currently antibody medicines require ultra-cold-chain during production and storage to prevent spoiling due to aggregation at the molecular level, which can occur at any stage from factory to patient.
This project uses game-changing, proprietary Ensilication technology to remove this cold-chain dependence in the manufacturing and supply of antibody treatments.
Ensilication technology will:
* reduce product losses during manufacturing,
* eliminate cold-chain costs and wastages during transport and storage.
Additionally, there are potential patient benefits as ensilication supports antibody therapies to be reformulated for lower volume/higher concentration, allowing a move from intravenous to subcutaneous administration in the community/home rather than clinic settings. EnsiliTech and CPI will demonstrate the implementation of the Ensilication process for antibody production and will perform comprehensive analysis and comparison of COGS with ensilication addition.
**Cold-chain logistics for antibody transport and storage**
Most antibodies require cold-chain logistics, with most therapeutic antibodies needing ultra-cold storage (-80°C) due to their aggregation propensity. Cold-chain failures are expensive, costing the biopharmaceutical industry $35 billion annually. Cold-chain infrastructure is also challenging in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) making antibody treatments less accessible.
**Antibody aggregation and easier subcutaneous administration**
Antibodies are prone to aggregation, resulting in low product concentration and frozen storage. Most are administered intravenously in hospitals, inconveniencing patient experience with long injection times.
Ensilication prevents antibody aggregation and allows for increased concentration in smaller volumes, which can enable reformulation for subcutaneous administration. This technology enhances ease of administration by reducing the physical volume of antibody treatments, removing aggregation and allowing for room-temperature stability. The project leverages the growing trend of reformulating intravenous antibody treatments for **subcutaneous administration**, which is less invasive, more convenient, and can be administered in community or home settings.
**Impact of the Project**
**Sustainability and Accessibility**: By removing the dependency on cold-chain logistics and improving antibody stability and administration, the project will significantly reduce costs and improve treatment access, especially in LMICs.
**Scalability**: The manufacturing process developed for ensilicated antibodies is applicable to other products, creating a platform for the production of thermally-stable antibody therapies and other biopharmaceuticals.
**Healthcare and Ecological Benefits**: The project reduces the environmental and economic burden of cold-chain logistics and hospital-based administration while improving patient access to advanced antibody therapies. Moving treatments to community settings will also alleviate pressure on healthcare systems.
The intellectual property generated will be licensed to manufacturers, enabling sustainable production and broader distribution of antibody therapies across the globe.
Peptides are naturally occurring molecules, made by cellular organisms, that play a significant role in cell signalling and function. They are also artificially synthesised due to their important properties in research and as medicines, such as insulin. However, peptide medicines are difficult and expensive to make. The current manufacturing processes are extremely wasteful, requiring environmentally hazardous chemicals with some of those chemicals being carcinogenic.
The Origin Peptides Project sets out to develop our novel peptide synthesis technology, in combination with industry-leading product sampling technologies, to create a commercially ready peptide manufacturing system to make life-saving medicines with the smallest environmental footprint and at the lowest cost.
With the increase in diabetes the world is in desperate need of enough insulin, and the development of peptide -medications like Ozempic, mean demand for peptides is greater than it has ever been.
Origin Peptides has discovered and optimised a new method of peptide manufacturing that is faster, much cleaner and much better for the environment. Our technology has been thoroughly demonstrated in the laboratory at small scale. The next step is expand that process at larger scales which pharmaceutical companies can utilise to make medicines for those in need.
In this collaborative project we will work with the world's biggest manufacturers of peptide medicines to make sure the method we develop can be used as quickly as possible to benefit patients. Together with the world-class experts in engineering, chemistry and manufacturing processes from the renowned Centre for Process Innovation (UK), we will be building a cutting edge process and hardware suite for environmentally friendly peptide manufacture.
We will build a UK base for exceptional peptide synthesis, and therefore have a local expertise and supply of life- saving and crucial medicines. These will be produced ethically, environmentally and using circular economy, in a way that is only possible with Origin Peptides new technology- a world first in aqueous templated peptide synthesis.
By 2050, 60% more food will be needed to feed a world population of up to 10 billion people (FAO). Achieving this with a farming-as-usual approach would be detrimental to our Climate, natural resources, and health.
Food production relies on synthetic fertilisers, accounting for approximately 5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are harmful to human health. Their use is also not sustainable. The Earth's phosphorus supply could run out within 50 - 100 years. Farmers/growers are therefore facing the challenge of reducing synthetic fertiliser usage as required by law/regulations whilst increasing food production using more sustainable, organic farming methods to meet an ever-rising global demand.
This project will develop a novel biofilm-based fertiliser that reduces the use of synthetic fertilisers by 40% to 50%. It will create a biofilm using a unique consortium of UK Indigenous bacteria, improving soil quality and plant/crop health and leading to higher yields (20%---30%). The new fertiliser will have a minimum shelf-life of 24 months. Whilst there is a lot of published research on biofilms, no commercial product with comparable features is available on the market.
PHARMECO is supported by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU). The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and COCIR, EFPIA, Europa Bío, MedTech Europe, and Vaccines Europe. The project's overall objective is to revolutionize pharmaceutical manufacturing towards sustainability by integrating environmentally friendly technologies/processes and harmonized sustainability assessments methods into healthcare industry practices. This encompasses early design phase, operation, and eventual use and disposal. The project's first objective is to enhance the early-stage development of pharmaceutical products by implementing Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD)-driven process-intensified platforms (e.g. continuous manufacturing). This involves designing sustainable processes based on so-called SELECT (Safety, Environment, Legal, Economy, Control and Throughput) criteria and setting up eco-friendly systems for producing small molecules, peptides, oligo-nucleotides, proteins and ribonucleic acid (RNA) with advanced control measures. Next, PHARMECO aims to scale up and demonstrate environmentally friendly processes for industrial manufacturing and decontamination, which includes creating infrastructure for studying key unit operations with sustainable technology and for SSbD-driven process intensified manufacture at a scale sufficient for clinical testing and a manufacturing process that is easily transferred to a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) environment. PHARMECO also aims to steer the development of (bio)manufacturing processes towards sustainable production through digital decision-making tools. This involves creating a modular digital tool for assessing sustainability from multiple perspectives, evaluating practices. Finally, the project seeks to establish a standardized approach for assessing the environmental sustainability of pharmaceuticals, which involves collaboration with various stakeholders to create scientifically robust guidelines, applying consistent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies, and facilitate regulatory adoption of standardized LCA practices. By integrating sustainability considerations into every phase of manufacturing, PHARMECO will positively revolutionize pharmaceutical industry.
**DBBHA-FEAS: evidencing technical and commercial feasibility of producing hyaluronic acid utilising a new highly productive strain of cyanobacteria.**
A UK-based SME, Deep Blue Biotech Ltd, is collaborating with CPI in this 6 month feasibility study. The project focuses on two primary objectives. Firstly, we aim to develop our cyanobacteria platform, leveraging the rapid growth and high biomass accumulation of a recently identified highly productive strain to enhance our production capabilities. Secondly, in partnership with CPI, we will conduct a comprehensive techno-economic analysis to validate both the technical and commercial viability of our approach.
This analysis will focus on refining the strain and crucially optimising downstream processing. By simplifying the purification process, we aim to achieve price competitiveness while also delivering superior quality, enhanced sustainability, and logistical advantages.
Post project we will refine and scale our proprietary metabolic engineering approach before moving into the pilot phase in collaboration with CPI. By 2031, we expect HA's domestic and localised supply chain to generate internal revenues of £177 million and profits of £35 million, strengthening our commitment to sustainable development.
An estimated 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic waste have been generated globally since the 1950s (Statista, 2022) of which over 50% remains in landfill or loose in the environment. Global greenhouse gas emissions from the production, recycling, and disposal of plastics are more than double that of air travel (Nature Climate Change,2019).
In line with current demand, fossil-based plastics are produced at a rate of ~400mtpa. While useful and ubiquitous, they have been developed focusing on function rather than end-of-life performance and their environmental impact.
Recycling alone is not the complete answer to the "plastics problem". This includes cost, food contamination, polymer degradation, and environmental leakage to soils and oceans. Bio-based and biodegradable plastics are an important part of the solution providing low-carbon routes to such materials and biodegradation in appropriate environments.
This collaborative project between Biome Technologies plc, and the Centre for Process Innovation(CPI) will complete the development of the manufacturing process and product optimisation of one of Biome's new class of bio-based and biodegradable polymers that has been the subject of 7 years of R&D and is now approaching commercialisation.
The project's outcome will facilitate the commercial deployment of a new sustainable and biodegradable material, reducing landfill and the environmental burden of non-biodegradable plastics in composts and soils whilst increasing productivity and growth for the wider UK (bio)economy.
The partnership between CGTC, CPI and Cogent will complement RESILIENCE initiatives and will enhance skills and training opportunities by addressing the gaps and needs of emerging medicines modalities. Creating new training resources coving advanced nucleic acid therapeutics manufacturing will complement existing medicines manufacturing training. This expansion will span from key stage 3-6 through to professional development training ensuring that these new modalities are represented at all stages of education, which in turn will promote the variety of jobs available in our sector, increasing the outreach of UK skills offering. New content will be introduced in a variety of modalities including self-paced, interactive online or in person depending on the nature and level of the audience. This approach will ensure that different learning styles are addressed.
This work will be further complemented by the collaboration with CGTC and Cogent. CPI will incorporate their content and support the development of CGT's new apprenticeships based on the RNA skills foresighting work CPI has just completed. Cogent will support the group by promoting the content and activity within the UK through their established employer networks, with a particular focus on engaging SMEs and micro businesses.
CGTC will further extend its award winning apprenticeship programme to support emerging and existing talent in new areas identified by comprehensive business engagement. Employers have asked for solutions for Digital and Automation, Quality and Manufacturing to be developed for the apprenticeship portfolio. The quality pathway will support SMEs in Scotland by offering the Modern Apprenticeship in Quality Operations. By creating these pathways and working with identified providers, employers in the Medicines Manufacturing sector will be able to build robust talent pipelines, directly addressing areas of concern. CGTC will also build its offering in new medicines modalities, supporting employers to engage early talent apprenticeships and develop their own employees. Working closely with CPI, Cogent and Resilience, existing technical and behavioural content will be integrated into these pathways and developed where gaps are identified.
Cogent skills working with CGTC will facilitate a number of employer groups covering the UK gaining feedback on industry skills needs for the current and future workforce. We will predominantly directly engage with micro, small and medium Medicines Manufacturing employers to introduce them to the RESILIENCE and partner offers of support and engagement while supporting the apprenticeship agenda.
The Pharmaceutical industry is really good at employing molecular-level chemistry models to help predict likely new cures for diseases. On the flip side it is bad (vs. other industries) at applying modelling to manufacturing to predict how and when to make products most effectively. This is for a number of reasons, one of which is the lack of good quality data. This would enable the models to make better predictions; as more good data, leads to better predictions. One way to get more data is to make it yourself, but that's expensive and wasteful as a solo effort. It's much better if you can share.
Companies find it hard to trust each other sharing data though, as they are competitors. So sharing is blocked by cyber security concerns, commercial threats, and the lack of certainty that the data will be used as intended.
One way to fix these concerns is to employ Federated Data sharing technologies. These novel digital tools address the concerns of 'who has access to data' and 'why', because you can control these aspects centrally. They are also very cyber secure. They do not solve the concerns of commercial threat, however. As, if you share all of your data, you may well give away valuable secrets.
The obvious solution is to share data (through the new technologies) but share segments of the data, not the whole. This way modelling outcomes can be achieved more effectively, but you're not giving away valuable information. The trouble here is that there is little evidence that redacted datasets lead to better modelling outcomes. There is also a business risk, as there are very few practical tools available to determine how much data is 'too much' data shared.
This project (SHARPEN) intends to deliver a platform for data sharing (so we can assess it) that runs across R&D data to manufacturing (ensuring good data transfer across all relevant data) and deliver a risk assessment tool (to enable rapid assessment and subsequent sharing of data), as well as working out what someone would pay for that service.
We will deliver the outcomes through diverse partners who have significant experience in the pharmaceutical sector and who've successfully worked together in the past. We will enable a number of market ready digital tools in the process. Ensuring medicines manufacturing becomes more efficient through effective use of models to accurately predict what to do next.
River Water Quality Monitoring (RWQM) is an important tool in protecting public health, improving our environment, and managing our precious water resources. Previous RWQM approaches are no longer fit for purpose and cannot support the scale of current legislative and regulatory objectives. Recent developments in semi-conductor technologies, artificial intelligence and remote communication make it possible to radically improve RWQM and deliver wide scale positive environmental outcomes.
NUUV, in collaboration with water industry and conservation stakeholders, is leading a team to bring cutting edge 'Industry 4.0' technologies together to deliver a novel solution that addresses the challenge of RWQM. This partnership and insight lead program will unlock value by providing a proactive approach to understanding the sources and impacts of pollution and how to mitigate them.
The new monitoring technology uses light-based measurement techniques to provide accurate data without the use of the harmful chemicals typically used in legacy approaches. Perceived as a disruptive technology, the novel solution under development will, for the first time, make 'Big Data' on complex river systems available to all interested parties. This will support land and resource managers, water users and citizen scientists as we all come together to take care of our environment.
This project will be developed under a program to bring the solution to market in 18 months, deliver value for money from public investment, create employment and cutting-edge technologies. NUUV is proud to be developing this solution in the North West of England and to be supporting the supply chain, and building exciting employment opportunities in leading data, science and engineering disciplines.
Modern farming relies on synthetic fungicides to support crop yields. Unfortunately, these chemicals are often associated with environmental and human health risks and are increasingly failing due to development of resistance. In the UK, wheat represents the primary arable grain crop, with an annual production of 15.5Mn tonnes and a market value of £1.2Bn. _Zymoseptoria tritici_, a fungal pathogen, causes the most destructive and economically damaging foliar disease affecting winter wheat in the UK, resulting in yield losses of **≤**50%. To manage this disease, farmers resort to **≤**12 fungicide applications, but this widespread use is causing pathogen resistance and environmental degradation.
There is therefore an urgent need for new, safe, and green fungicides and microbial chemistry offers a powerful alternative.
Microbes that compete with pathogens in nature provide a source of highly effective fungicidal compounds, but historically only 1% of these microbes have been explored. This is because only this small percentage can survive the transition from natural symbiotic communities to isolation in laboratory conditions.
At Bactobio, we use breakthroughs in next-generation sequencing, machine learning, and bioengineering to understand microbial community compositions and chemical/physical conditions needed to make each microbial community viable. We mimic these communities and conditions, resulting in novel cultured microbial species, which we screen for novel, green, and safe fungicides.
We have developed a platform that provides access to the remaining 99% of previously unexplored microbes. The extensive database we are generating supports machine learning approaches to further optimise our experimentation, ensuring that we harness the full potential of uncultured microbes.
In this project, our goal is to leverage our exclusive access to previously uncultured microbes to discover new bio-derived fungicides against _Z. tritici_. We aim to enhance our microbial library and build a sophisticated compound identification platform, enabling the development of a high-throughput fungicide discovery engine. We intend to boost our genomics and compound profiling technologies to consistently discover, test, and scale up the production of new compounds for further development. Our objective is to discover and develop fungicidal compounds targeting _Z. tritici._ By project end, we aim to have 3-5 fungicides targeting _Z. tritici_ with complete data packages up to small plot field trials. Subsequently, we will license them to large agritech players.
Together, we aim to safeguard future food security, reduce the environmental impact of disease management, slow the spread of disease resistance, and protect the economic viability of wheat farming in the UK.
Orthoses are correctional devices used to treat musculoskeletal conditions and wounds by realigning anatomical structures and improving pressure distribution. Custom-fit orthoses provide individualised, total-contact fit and fully bespoke correction, which optimises realignment and pressure redistribution compared to prefabricated orthoses, optimising treatment outcomes.
Current thermoplastic materials used in orthotic applications can only be cast onto plaster models, not directly onto human skin, which is a highly time-consuming process requiring additional resources and expensive third-party manufacturers.
Consequently, custom-devices are not readily available to NHS patients due to high costs to healthcare providers and time-consuming processes, meaning less patients benefit from their use. Kaydiar will optimise the use of custom-devices by solving these challenges, introducing an affordable, fast and practical solution.
Kaydiar specialises in medical R&D with an ambitious product pipeline of innovative, pressure redistribution, orthopaedic/orthotic devices, designed to improve treatment processes and outcomes for musculoskeletal disorders (fractures/soft-tissue injuries), wounds and deformity. This project will support the development of a new medical device comprised of smart composite material that can thermo-form to surface anatomy, providing an affordable solution to 20Mn UK patients and 1.7Bn people globally whom suffer from musculoskeletal conditions. The patentable design will allow Kaydiar to enter into UK and global markets worth £50Mn and $5Bn respectively. Custom-orthoses will be the first application of a thermo-forming composite with integrated jet-printed heating technology (PROmorph), for lower-limb musculoskeletal realignment, used in podiatry-orthopaedic settings.
Kaydiar will disrupt this sector by innovating and shaping its PROmorph material into a custom-orthotic that will:
1\. Halve prescription costs;
2\. Accelerate treatment delivery by reducing prescription times by 99%. Earlier treatment will improve the patient's treatment journey and outcomes;
3\. Later monitor compliance through integrated sensors to inform/improve treatment plans.
This project will provide the opportunity to refine PROmorph's design post technical testing, ensuring optimum functionality and usability.
Downstream processing within the biomanufacturing industry has faced sustained challenges over several decades, driven by increased patient demand for therapeutics and the notable scalability of upstream production. Upstream scalability is achieved by enhancing cell productivity without increasing equipment size or media volume. In contrast, downstream processing scalability is tied to product mass. This results in a linear relationship between product mass and equipment size, buffer volume, filter area, and the number of chromatography resins needed. This lack of scalability efficiency translates to no inherent economy of scale in downstream processing.
Accommodating larger-scale upstream processes incurs higher costs due to adding further downstream process trains to meet the augmented demand, often called "numbering up." The consortium members have identified the need for innovation in downstream processing to enhance process efficiency and sustainability. Innovations encompass streamlining existing processes, integrating cost-effective technologies from other industries, substituting fixed equipment with intensified modules, and developing high-tech solutions serving as game-changers in process redesign.
There is a compelling need for novel approaches, including continuous processing, the integration of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) and advanced control and automation to address these challenges. The consortium strategically leverages the CPI's end-to-end continuous biomanufacturing system as a foundation, aiming to seamlessly integrate Causeway Sensor's innovative nanosensor devices for real-time product analysis and ISC's expertise in automation and process control. This collaborative effort emphasises a dedication to advancing technology and highlights the consortium's commitment to developing highly sophisticated hardware tailored for state-of-the-art continuous biomanufacturing solutions.
Downstream purification is a multi-stage process including affinity chromatography and ion exchange chromatography. In this project, the partners will focus on the ion exchange stages, often called polishing. The partners will explore via a design of experiments and real-time sensor feedback, the optimal process conditions for maximising the yield and purity of the final biotherapeutic product. The ultimate aim of the project is to reduce water and energy consumption, minimise waste generation, and establish intensified purification processes that are cheaper, faster and more environmentally conscious.
The TRANSSition project will deliver scientific and engineering innovation to transform a bioprocess from batch to continuous production at demonstration scale. Fiberight has successfully developed a batch enzyme hydrolysis process that converts mixed paper and card waste into industrial sugars. The waste paper/card used as the feedstock is recovered from Fiberight's innovative resource recovery process HYDRACYCLE.
Fiberght will collaborate with Aberystwyth University and the Centre for Process Innovation to deliver a structured research and development programme. TRANSSition will deliver advancements in the enzyme hydrolysis process to make it suitable for continuous operation, and consistently produce higher value products such as lactic acid. The project also aims to improve process economics, boost production volumes, increase automation, reduce process variability and provide consistent products for off-take testing.
Fiberight will also work with several end users, including Chestnut Polymers, to test the second-generation sugars and other materials in different products, ensuring they are fit for purpose and meet the technical requirements of the end use applications.
The project responds to challenges of developing new and disruptive sustainable biomanufacturing in the UK. This will be achieved by using bio-based, waste derived feedstocks, enabling sustainable, circular products to be manufactured for the UK chemicals and materials sectors.
Near-infrared (NIR) sensors are commonly manufactured using III-V semiconductors, are expensive to produce, incompatible with standard CMOS fabrication and predominantly manufactured in the far east. This limits their usefulness and relegates them to low-volume markets.
LoMaRe's patented invention detects NIR light in Si/CMOS-compatible materials with no rare earth components and production steps and can also be used on flexible substrates. This would allow this new type of sensor not only to be the cheapest on the market but also to be produced in the UK, building world-class domestic production, improving supply chain resilience, and lowering emissions.
The new sensor also has high photon current efficiency in NIR, with very low response time, making it ideal for LIDAR, facial recognition, and high-speed data retrieval in fibre-optic cables, whilst allowing for much reduced fabrication cost and overall higher throughput in terms of manufacturability.
LoMaRe's partnership with CPI develops the prototype into a commercial version that could revolutionise sensor manufacturing in the UK and transform several domestic and global industries.
The enzyme Neutrophil Elastase (NE) is associated with the severity of several respiratory diseases, including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), where repeated cycles of infection and inflammation leads to active NE release from immune cells, causing lung damage. Active NE is predictive of lung function loss and is the most informative biomarker to monitor disease activity.
ProAxsis has developed a novel point-of-care test (NEATstik) which allows active NE to be quickly measured within 10 minutes. Researchers in Dundee have shown that a positive NEATstik test identifies patients suffering from a lung bacterial infection, who are most likely to benefit from antibiotics. Additionally, they used NEATstik to identify patients at highest risk of suffering from exacerbations over the following year. Thus, NEATstik can support appropriate antibiotic prescribing, and monitoring of their effect, to ensure that respiratory disease patients receive the treatment that is most likely to work for them.
An additional key advantage of NEATstik is that it could be used in the patient's home, thereby avoiding unnecessary trips to hospital, a key consideration in the post-COVID environment. To make this viable, enhancements are needed for the sample processing required for conduct of the test. Further valuable information could be gained if the NEATstik result was combined with other respiratory health measures. This is a collaborative project between ProAxsis Limited, who developed NEATstik, the Centre for Process and Innovation (CPI), a world-renowned product engineering expert centre and Wanda Health, specialists in integrating new technologies into remote patient monitoring systems. Together, the partners will significantly enhance the sample processing required for NEATstik, and integrate the test alongside multiple other respiratory health measures into a remote patient monitoring tool, allowing patients to conduct the test at home, and their healthcare professionals to observe the NEATstik test result alongside other important health data.
Our groundbreaking project is set to revolutionize the sustainable materials market by developing innovative and cost-effective methods for producing a new generation of protein-based materials. These materials have the potential to transform various industries, including fashion, healthcare, and consumer goods, by providing high-performance, environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional materials.
Using cutting-edge technologies like AI-driven protein design, laboratory automation, and our proprietary screening platform, our unique approach accelerates the development of custom protein-based materials. These materials aim to address the challenge of producing high-performance, sustainable biomaterials that can be scaled up to industrial processes. In partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), we will develop novel bioprocesses to manufacture our materials in a cost-effective manner. Central to this project is the use of an industrially relevant expression host known for its robustness and high protein yields.
Our technology designs completely new protein sequences from scratch, avoiding the issues associated with using natural protein sequences. This innovative approach allows us to develop high-performance, sustainable bio-based alternatives to petrochemical-derived synthetic materials.
The expected outputs of this project include innovative bioprocesses, new recombinant protein expression strains, and a final report. These outputs will help meet the growing demand for high-performance and environmentally friendly materials.
This project represents a significant leap forward in the development of sustainable materials, with the potential to disrupt various industries by offering high-performance, bio-based alternatives to petrochemical-derived synthetic materials. The successful execution of this project, in partnership with CPI, will not only position us as a leader in the sustainable materials market but also contribute to meeting global climate goals and fostering a greener, more sustainable future.
Synthetic biology offers exciting potential for the production of valuable chemicals and materials that can replace fossil fuel based equivalents for more profitable and sustainable materials manufacturing.
Bioreactors are an important component of any synthetic biology production process. However, available bioreactors have been developed to serve the biopharmaceutical industry, producing high-value, low-volume products, with high R&D budgets required for process development and scaling.
Existing bioreactors produce low yields and are difficult to scale. This results in resource intensive, costly processes that are difficult and time consuming (5-7 years) to commercialise. Consequently, synthetic biology production cannot currently compete with petroleum-derived equivalents.
Sterling Bio Machine's novel design reimagines bioreactors from a first principles approach. The concept provides superior control over conditions across the bioreactor volume, at all scales, enabling increased productivity and rapid process development from lab to commercial production scale. Our bioreactors will unlock the full potential offered by engineering biology.
Today, metals needed to produce electric vehicle (EV) batteries are overwhelmingly sourced from large scale mining and/or industrial activities outside Europe at significant environmental, societal and financial cost. Increasing EV demand, the tightening of legislation, and the expected imposition of tariffs are all driving the need for local, resilient, green and responsible sources of these metals.
Altilium Metals (AM) is a UK-based green technology group decarbonising the EV supply chain. AM's technologies enable resource circularity by recovering critical metals from existing sources, including spent electric vehicle batteries and existing metal mining waste, and using these in the production of new batteries.
If the UK is to compete in battery manufacturing, then resilient and local supplies of battery materials are needed. While the focus has been to secure supplies of Lithium, Nickel and Cobalt, there has been much less attention on other critical metals used in batteries. For example, Copper makes up around 11% of an NMC battery by weight, while Aluminium typically makes up 19%. These metals are also used extensively in other EV components. While these metals are not conventionally considered rare, the growth of green transport and energy markets will greatly increase demand and require new supply options. 'The Future of Copper' report in 2022, warned: _"Unless massive new \[copper\] supply comes online in a timely way, the goal of Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 will remain out of reach_".
Battery recycling is expected to meet only about 10% of the demand for battery materials in 2040\. In the ReTail project, AM will focus on recovery of metals from mining waste to meet this shortfall. AM holds exclusive rights to process and sell minerals from a large mine tailings site in Eastern Europe. Detailed analysis has confirmed significant residues of copper, iron, aluminium and other metals in the mining waste. AM also owns a processing plant on the site, with environmental permits, which has been designed to extract copper from the tailings. As such, AM is in a prime position to be a first mover in Europe in this market.
The ReTail project aims to establish the techno-economic feasibility and environmental impacts of extracting and processing tailings from the site as a source of battery materials for UK EV battery manufacturing supply chains. AM will collaborate with CPI to develop clean and efficient methods to reprocess the tailings and extract metals to show feasibility for use in battery manufacturing.
Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EV's) are vulnerable to Thermal Runaway (TR): an incident where a cell heats in an uncontrolled manner, breaches a safe operating temperature and triggers a domino effect of overheating in the rest of the module or pack.
The outcome of such incidents can be a fire that leads to damage to the vehicle or even to loss of life. The spread of TR and major incidents can be prevented or mitigated with an effective TR barrier: a thin, lightweight layer of a super-insulating material.
The project partners will develop AEROPROOF: UK's first aerogel-based EV Thermal Runaway Barrier for prevention / minimisation of Thermal events.
In a century of global geopolitical and environmental challenges, the need for disruptive technologies that can decarbonize industrial processes and create localized supply chains is ever-increasing. Addressing this call, this project targets the energy sector, specifically by enabling the development of a UK-based electrolyte supply chain built upon novel chemical technologies initially developed in the world-renowned labs of V. Gouverneur FRS at the University of Oxford and now in commercial development at its spin-out FluoRok.
Electrolytes in Li-ion batteries are dominated by fluorinated compounds and like all fluorochemicals, their synthesis is entirely based on a centuries-old chemical process involving highly toxic, hazardous and difficult-to-handle hydrogen fluoride (HF). FluoRok's novel and disruptive proprietary technology changes this paradigm allowing for the first time to bypass HF production and directly manufacture fluorinated materials from raw minerals (fluorite, CaF2) or fluorinated waste streams, both of which could be supplied locally (UK or close EU partners).
This project will leverage this technology for the safer, and lower cost manufacturing of high-value specialty components in Li-ion batteries - LiPF6 ($3‑5Bn market, CAGR of \>15%), which represent between 6-8% of the total cell cost. Accordingly, this project has the potential to be a significant accelerator towards cost parity of electric vs Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) based transportation.
Through exploitation of our technology, we will enable vastly improved manufacturing cost, lower carbon emissions and introduce for the first time a cyclic economy for fluorochemicals via the use of waste fluoride sources. Alongside the significant safety benefits of executing our technology on scale, notable barriers such as high capital expenditure, environmental protections, and excessive controls of hazard operations are equally circumvented. With this project, FluoRok will enable the UK economy to compete on the global stage for the manufacture of Li-ion battery components and build a UK based supply chain for a key area of the battery industry.
BatCAT is the project that realizes the manufacturability programme from the BATTERY 2030+ Roadmap, creating a digital twin for battery manufacturing that integrates data-driven and physics-based methods. It develops a cross-chemistry data space for two technologies, (1) Li-ion and Na-ion coin cells and (2) redox flow batteries, addressing a triple challenge in digital manufacturing: (i) Design, (ii) operation, and (iii) trust. (i) By improved product and process design and optimization, product quality and process efficiency increase. This requires decision support that makes complex decision problems accessible to human decision makers. The digital twin technology from BatCAT provides an interpretable industrial decision support system (IIDSS) based on multicriteria optimization. Surrogate modelling connects the high-level analysis firmly to ground-truth data. (ii) Process operation and control is improved by acquiring and analysing sensory and operando data at real time, facilitating live interventions within an Industry 5.0 real-time environment. BatCAT follows a rigorous approach to actionable modelling, combining data-driven methods with deductive reasoning based on ontologies and formal methods (answer set programming and BPMN-based model checking) to guarantee a reliable behaviour. (iii) The approach from BatCAT produces trustworthy models: Machine learning always retains a clearly characterized connection to the ground truth, and any decision support or decision making from inductive reasoning is safeguarded by constraints through formal deductive reasoning. All our models and methods are explainable, and all our data are FAIR and explainable-AI-ready (XAIR). The digital twin is validated in pilot production lines for (1) coin cells and (2) redox flow batteries, proving its transferability across chemistries. The project is closely connected to the Advanced Materials 2030 Initiative, BIG-MAP and BATTERY 2030+, BEPA, DigiPass CSA, EOSC, EMMC, and the Knowledge Graph Alliance, ensuring a community and industry uptake of the results.
Using live bacteria as vaccines and therapies for diseases has long been seen as an attractive idea, offering a way to target the immune system more comprehensively. Unfortunately, the approach is difficult to control, with potentially fatal consequences. SimCell technology, developed at the University of Oxford, solves this problem by producing live bacterial cells that lack genetic material (DNA) and are therefore unable to divide.
SimCells are made by introducing a switch that can be triggered to destroy the bacteria's DNA so that it can no longer divide. The bacteria remain intact, retaining the important cell-surface features recognised by the immune system. Existing methods of inactivating bacteria for use as vaccines involve heat, chemicals, or irradiation. These are harsh treatments, which damage the cells and reduce their ability to induce immune responses.
The spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major public health challenge, causing some 700,000 deaths per year worldwide. By 2050 deaths from AMR infection could rise to more than 10 million, making all surgical procedures life-threatening and causing health systems to collapse.
E. coli and Salmonella are considered 'Priority 1: Critical' and 'Priority 2: High' pathogens, respectively, by the World Health Organization, due to their high level of antibiotic resistance, underscoring the urgent need for new solutions. Poultry products serve as the primary source of infection for both pathogens in humans, and the poultry industry remains one of the main contributors to antimicrobial resistance due to the magnitude of antimicrobial use in the industry.
In this project, we will apply SimCell technology to develop a new whole-cell inactivated vaccine against E. coli and Salmonella for poultry. The key goal is to develop a SimCell-based animal vaccine against E. coli and Salmonella, which induce immune responses in chickens that protect against subsequent infections. Upscaling production and the demonstration of safety and efficacy of the E. coli and Salmonella SimCell vaccine will help us accelerate the development of SimCell vaccines against other pathogens of concern in both animals and humans.
The manufacture of medicines was brought to the fore during the recent pandemic. The urgency of being able to produce the quantities and quality of medicine in a short period of time focussed minds across academia and industry. A further focus for the public in recent years has been the protection of our environment and introduction of practises reducing harmful emissions as well as reducing waste in processes. This project will address both the novel medicines manufacturing capabilities of the UK as well as seeking to reduce the environmental impact of such manufacturing.
Oligonucleotides are short sequences of DNA or RNA that can be used as a therapeutic, for a wide range of clinical applications, by binding to complementary sequences in target cells found in the body. They will either target the protein or the mRNA that produces the protein and prevent gene or protein expression. A significant factor in using oligonucleotides in medicines manufacturing is the purification process(es), which can be both costly and wasteful of resources. The focus of the project partners is to see the introduction of enhanced purification processes, benefiting patients, as well as to reduce the quantities of material required, thereby reducing cost for already pressurised health budgets globally, and also bringing significant environmental advantages.
The project will see BioToolomics (SME) bring their expertise in purification technologies, combined with CPI's experience and facilities in oligonucleotide process development, working with Almac Sciences' blockmer assembly approach to deliver on this challenging and innovative project.
The rapid development, manufacture and supply of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 is one of the greatest success stories in modern medicine. Demonstrably safe and effective in over billion patients, the question now is not if, but how quickly, this revolutionary combination of an mRNA therapy and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) carrier can be expanded to and exploited against other diseases. A key outstanding challenge is the requirement for (ultra)cold-chain storage and distribution. This has severely limited global access to these potentially life-saving technologies, particularly in lower income countries. This project brings together four of the most innovative mRNA/LNP organizations in the UK who will work together to create the world's first thermostable LNP-mRNA vaccine, ready for use wherever and whenever it is needed in the future.
To tackle this challenge, we will take a holistic, bottom-up approach to design new LNP compositions with inherent, enhanced stability profiles but without compromising efficacy or safety. Led by NanoVation Therapeutics UK, a leading LNP innovation company founded by the co-developers of the Pfizer vaccine LNP, a key focus will be the incorporation of abundant and safe, natural lipids, known to stabilize biological lipid structures. In parallel, NanoVation's 'inside-out' efforts will be intertwined with iosBio's 'outside-in' excipient technologies to further boost LNP thermostability. iosBio's pioneering work on excipient stabilization has enabled the long-term storage (cryogenic and lyophilized powder) of viral vaccines without loss of potency.
Following preclinical proof of concept (PoC) demonstration, we will next investigate de-risking pharmaceutical development by investigating long-term stability and manufacturability. This will be led by the UK's RNA centre of excellence, established by the Centre of Process Innovation (CPI). By exploiting CPI's innovative open access model, we will ensure we have a viable product ready for deployment into clinical trials.
Finally, our lead LNP technology will be transferred to BaseImmune - a next-generation mRNA vaccine company that utilises data driven design algorithms to create potent and variant resistant mRNA vaccines. Their platform combines genomics, immunological data, and epidemiological data with bespoke antigen design AI to generate multi-target antigens. Their lead programmes on COVID-19 and Malaria are anticipated to enter the clinic during this project, providing the ideal pathway for this project to make an impact.
All companies involved have the democratisation of medicines at the heart of their mission and we are determined to realise this -- **together we will bring mRNA vaccines in from the cold!**
FlexSea has teamed up with the UK Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) to optimise and up-scale the biosynthesis of two innovative biomaterials. Poly-gamma glutamic acid and Poly(hydroxyalkanoates) are two classes of biologically derived biopolymers that could significantly displace synthetic alternatives. With FlexSea striving to meet the demand for home compostable, bio-based alternative products to conventional plastics, this project aims to tackle this significant industrial challenge.
Thanks to FlexSea's innovative fermentation technology we can now use spent algal fractions (by-product of FlexSea's transparent film casting technology - uses 20\_40% of the seaweed fraction) to synthesise these materials reproducibly. During the project we aim to further optimise the yields and characteristics of the biopolymers as well as liaise with industrial partners to assess their properties for a number of applications.
During the project the biosynthesis of these materials will be up-scaled from 250 mL to 4-L to 1500L.
By the end of the 20-month project FlexSea aims to patent the technology and employ the material synthesised to undertake commercial pilots with several industry partners.In addition, the consortium will deliver a full technoeconomic and life-cycle assessment for further commercialization of the technology. By producing three single use plastic- alternatives (hydrocolloid films; PHAs, PGGA) in a biorefinery approach, we aim to scale and commercialise the sustainable (no waste) and economic advantage (reduced raw material costs; additional revenue stream) of using seaweed as a sustainable bio-based feedstock.
Biophilica's patented leather alternative Treekind(R), developed together with Eurofins BLC Leather, is an existing product for watch strap applications.
Petrochemical-free materials appeal across the board to audiences, especially millennials and Gen Z. However, these materials are rare (Vegconomist).
Treekind(R), completely free of petrochemicals, is the only leather alternative made from green waste -- combined with plant-only plasticizers and binders. This is attractive to UK/international furniture brands looking for alternatives to leather and petrochemical/non-biodegradable PU/PVC.
Biophilica has relationships with a number of high-profile brands. ID Watches is revealing their Treekind collection of Watches a little later this year. BESTSELLER announced in a joint press release that their brand Jack & Jones will create sample products with Treekind(R).
Treekind(R) is suitable for watch straps, leathergoods, and some footwear applications. Scaling Treekind(R) is required for the material to be competitively priced. This feasibility study will focus on key equipment to run production tests.
In this project, we want to investigate manufacturing processes together with manufacturers, digital systems for our processes to ensure quality control in our material, renewable energy options for the production process of Treekind(R), as well as reclamation of resources to ensure circularity within the production processes.
TISICS has unique high performance metal matrix composite technology to combine its in-house UK silicon carbide fibre reinforcement in light weight titanium and aluminium composites. These technologies deliver 30% to 70% weight reductions in metallic systems for space, aerospace, transport and energy sectors. Weight reduction in these sectors leads to direct reductions in CO2 emissions delivering into global Net Zero targets.
TISICS has recently demonstrated a 50% lighter landing gear component which is stronger than steel, can directly replace the steel part without system redesign and would repay its replacement cost in under 2 years of flight through fuel savings alone. CO2 emission costs in the future would create further cost benefits for airlines.
PRONET will enable TISICS to work with industry experts including the Centre for Process Innovation and a major UK chemical producer to establish significantly higher resource efficiency for high value feedstocks than is currently possible at TISICS. Improving resource efficiency has two benefits. Firstly it reduces raw material costs as a proportion for silicon carbide fibre costs as both the feed and waste have a cost impact. Secondly it reduces energy consumption from raw material supply through product manufacture to plant waste disposal. This supports TISICS mission towards Net Zero throughout its business activity.
The market potential for MMCs is growing rapidly with the initiatives to reduce carbon emissions across all sectors. Aviation is hard to abate but weight reduction is a near term opportunity for existing aircraft ahead of future sustainable fuels, hydrogen and advanced aircraft designs. Weight reduction solutions must be both economic and available at high volumes required across the aviation sector. PRONET will develop resource efficient process options for current production as well as robust methodologies needed to design a future very high volume fibre plant based in the UK to feed UK and international product sales.
This demonstration of scalability is a key element in industrialising UK technology and securing world leadership in light weighting Aviation and hence delivering Into The UK's NetZero promises.
Customer support for this programme has been very significant in preparing the ambitious scope for both near term and longer term resource efficiency benefits needed to meet the economic and technical challenges of introducing MMCs into products initially in aviation but expanding to space, energy and future ultra lightweight cars to maximise electric power economics.
We aim to decrease UK meat consumption, causing climate change(14.5% GHGs) and diet-related disease(WHO), by scaling up our novel low-emission production system to commercialise the UK's first ultra-realistic meat whole-cuts alternatives.
With growing sustainability/health concerns around meat, meat-alternatives are fast-growing; worth $12bn globally today (BCG;Bloomberg), reaching $103bn (7% of meat) by 2030\. Whole-cuts (steaks/fillets/etc) represent 85% of meat, but are near-absent from meat-alternatives; a huge untapped opportunity.
Plant-proteins have short fibres, with which it is difficult to replicate the fibrous texture of meat whole-cuts, and most products mimic processed meats (burgers/mince/sausages).
Mycoprotein has huge potential for meat whole-cuts alternatives, with long fibres (hyphae), exceptional protein quality, fibre and micronutrients (highly nutritious), and sustainability benefits (our products emit 93% lower GHGs than beef).
However, conventional mycelium production processes deliver products with limited textural appeal. Incumbent Quorn's high-shear process and short-fibre strain produce a disordered hyphal structure, rendering their whole-cuts unappealing to meat eaters, and requiring 15+ ingredients including non-vegan binders/stabilisers. To continue reducing meat consumption we need better quality, more innovative alternatives.
Adamo Foods has developed a ground-breaking mycelium-based steak, for which we have developed a game-changing, novel low-emission production process to address this challenge. We now need to design our commercial-scale production system. To do this, we aim to significantly shift the state-of-the-art.
We have developed a comprehensive 15-month project plan with UK-based leading experts in fungal fermentation, leveraging UK strengths and expertise to create new production systems and technologies.
Technical innovations: We will design a scaled-up production process, prototype core aspects of it, and run a demonstrator proof of concept.
Progressing commercial viability: A techno-economic assessment and commercially-oriented exploitation work package will align innovation with the commercial opportunity, accelerating innovation towards commercial reality.
Cultivated meat promises to revolutionize the food industry by providing a more ethical and greener alternative to animal products, whilst retaining the same taste and texture. However, these products are being held back by the technical complexity of production and, in particular, the high cost of materials used in their manufacture. It is estimated that costs need to be reduced by 99% or more.
A major contributor to these costs are the proteins used in production which supply biological cues to stimulate growth and ensure that the right type of meat cells are produced. Unless the cost of these proteins can be reduced by 99% or more, the sector will not be economically viable.
MarraBio has have developed a radically new way to make alternatives to the proteins currently used. Its materials can be made in very large quantities, and at a cost which will make cultivated meat economically viable. So far, MarraBio has produced "research grade" versions of the products and have preliminary evidence that they will meet the needs of the sector. In the project, MarraBio will demonstrate that the products can be produced at scale and at a quality where they will meet the regulatory requirements needed for their use in cultivated meat production. If successful, by the end of the project we will be in a position to launch our products on this rapidly growing market.
To achieve these aims MarraBio are partnering with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Aelius Biotech. CPI is a leader in protein manufacturing and analysis and will assist MarraBio in refining its manufacturing techniques to provide tight control over product quality and potency. Aelius Biotech have developed a model of the gut that predicts how ingested substances will affect the digestive system. Their involvement will allow MarraBio to test how their products are processed on ingestion - a critical safety step -- whilst allowing Aelius to further develop their technology towards the needs of this sector. With all participants based in North East England, their collaboration will support the rapidly growing cultivated meat sector in the region.
The outcomes of the project will have a significant impact on the ability to economically produce cultivated meat. This will provide a high quality, potent product that simplifies and reduces the cost of cultivated meat manufacture.
There is increasing industrial, regulatory and consumer demand for the use of greener alternatives across a range of everyday products, with a particular focus on formulated non-food items. It is also a key strategy for the UK government and manufacturers to use biobased alternatives to petrochemical-derived ingredients across the chemical industry. Bio-refining of a range of low-value biomass residues offers a way to produce intermediate chemicals to replace fossil-based materials, whilst simultaneously increasing their value and reducing their impact on the environment. However, current biorefining technologies are wasteful, inefficient and often unprofitable.
Bio-Sep, using its novel, patented ultrasonic processing technology, aims to make a step-change in biorefining while stimulating investments in the UK bioeconomy. In collaboration with a strong consortium of global leaders in process innovation, chemicals, composites and automotives, Bio-Sep aims to optimise the Sonichem technology for specific, renewable, consistent, and widely-available UK biomass and generate platform chemicals directly relevant to the paints, coatings, cosmetics, construction, resins, pharmaceuticals, and additives markets. The consortium will explore the use of lignin to pioneer composite resin formulations that contain high-levels of renewable, non-petrochemical content, and utilise low-carbon feedstocks. As part of the project, applications of this material to composites for automotive applications will be investigated.
The main outcome of the project will be optimised and validated ultrasonic fractionation of UK biomass residues, achieved in a commercially-viable and environmentally-sustainable manner under mild operating conditions, to produce high-quality lignin. The lignin will be demonstrated as suitable for the production of renewable, low carbon and bio-based feedstocks for composite materials relevant to the automotive sector. These outcomes allow Bio-Sep to provide a basis for the scaling of the innovation, promote the Sonichem biorefinery concept more widely, and advance subsequent commercialisation with exploitation partners across the chemicals industry.
Tackling sugar-related obesity and health challenges through a novel approach to scaling up production of Brazzein - a natural, non-caloric sweetener and sugar alternative.
Of the many environmental challenges we face in the UK, water pollution has been at the forefront in recent times. The DEFRA outcome delivery plan for 2021/22 lists the improvement of the environment through cleaner air and water, minimised waste, and thriving plants and terrestrial and marine wildlife first in its priority outcomes.
Part of the solution will be to develop a 'circular bioeconomy' in which our dependence on fossil fuels for environmental growth is removed, and resources are extracted and recovered from waste products and used as ingredients in new products or as a source of energy.
However, personal care products like make-up and shampoo will inevitably introduce a break in this circular economy as they end up in landfill or wastewater at the end of their use. In addition to there being no way of recovering and re-using their chemical ingredients, many of these products contain chemicals that are non-biodegradable and persist in the environment.
European regulations prevent the use of certain toxic chemicals in personal care products, due to their impact on the environment from contaminated wastewater. But there are many ingredients for which the effect is unknown or not studied, resulting in a lack of technical innovations that address this challenge.
Cosmetics have been used in human societies for over 7000 years and they continue to provide many people with a much-needed opportunity for self-care. Unfortunately, many of the chemicals in cosmetics cannot simply be removed as they give performance properties like ease of application or comfort to wear which are important to users. Consumers are then faced with a difficult choice between environmentally friendly products with poor performance or high-performance products with unknown environmental impact.
Our innovative solution is to replace non-biodegradable chemical ingredients with biodegradable alternatives like peptides. We have developed novel, proprietary peptides that perform better than industrial chemical standards, providing the user with the optimal balance of ease of application, long wear time and comfort without compromising sustainability. Peptides can be challenging to produce, but we have developed methods that allow for bioproduction by fermentation and efficient isolation of the product in a pure form. We now need funding to scale our processes to make enough peptide for a launch product with a commercial partner. This will not only demonstrate the potential for replacing environmentally persistent chemicals with biodegradable alternatives, but hopefully encourage greater innovation in this sector.
mRNA vaccines have the potential to transform healthcare interventions as evidenced by the approval of 2 products in the last 2 years for Covid-19\. The mRNA codes for an antigen for a disease that can either be administered to healthy patients to prevent infective diseases or can treat diseases such as cancer. Vaccines that prevent disease are typically administered via intramuscular or intradermal routes and those that treat disease are delivered intravenously. According to Clinical Trials.gov there are currently 287 ongoing mRNA vaccine clinical trials. However, the key to a successful vaccine is the delivery inside the cell and for this a 'trojan horse' is required. For the approved vaccines, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) have been used but the cells recognise the LNPs as foreign which provokes an immune response that is unrelated to the mRNA. Additionally, LNPs require cold chain storage, are solvent based, are restricted by the size of mRNA they can deliver with suboptimal endosomal escape.
pHion (Belfast SME) have developed a solution for mRNA delivery that is safe, does not further exacerbate the immune system, and readily enters antigen presenting cells with full escape of the mRNA to the cytoplasm of the cell. The innovation centres around the use of a peptide termed RALA that is designed to condense mRNA into nanoparticles (NPs) irrespective of size or number. The NPs have the properties necessary to enter cells, escape endosomes and deliver the cargo to the cytoplasm with high efficiency. pHion has shown that these vaccines are highly efficient in vivo because of this intracellular entry. However, as a platform technology, we need to address some key questions to realise the potential for global manufacture.
With clear alignment to the theme of this call, the aim is to develop both a liquid and powdered formulation of the RALA/mRNA vaccine platform that can be given either intravenously for therapeutic vaccines and intramuscularly or intradermally for prophylactic vaccines. Specific goals are to understand i) where the mRNA goes following injection via these routes; ii) how to formulate a stable liquid formulation; iii) how to freeze-dry large enough RALA/mRNA batches that can be scaled up; iv) how to ensure we make the NPs on multiple different types of microfluidics machines; v) how to produce a full package of critical key quality attributes and vi) an analysis of the cost of goods. This will make us and the UK future ready.
Palm oil production is reliant on intensive farming which is subject to price volatility and causes biodiversity loss. Global supply issues due to Covid and the war in Ukraine has also caused price inflation for manufacturers. In addition, the global population will grow to 10 billion by 2050, consuming more and more products - palmitic acid and palm oil derivatives are present in ~50% of packaged consumer products. There is an increasing need for a more sustainable and resilient process for palmitic acid production.
Bio-based manufacturing through the use of microorganisms offers exciting potential for the production of palmitic acid. However, development of suitable host strains for industrial scale biomanufacturing is slow and expensive.
Twig Bio are developing an automated, machine learning approach which will enable precision strain engineering and expedite development through rapid design-build-test cycles. The approach considers strain stabilisation from the outset ensuring strains are scalable and stable under continuous fermentation process conditions for use in industrial manufacturing.
In collaboration with the Centre for Process Innovation, the resulting strains will be evaluated for process scale up and commercial viability under process conditions to demonstrate the benefits of the approach in the development of sustainable bio-based manufacturing processes.
The RAP-IDD project (Rapid Development of Intracellular Drug Delivery Innovations), led by the UK SME Micropore Technologies (Micropore), supported by SME Labman Automation (Labman) and CPI, aims to develop and validate a new technology platform to encapsulate genomic material (RNA and DNA) in protective nanoparticles and integrate this with high-throughput characterisation. In a game-changing advance over current methods, the platform will be upgraded to continuous production to make it applicable to both high-throughput formulation development and continuous manufacturing - compliant with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). If successful, this new platform will make a step-change improvement in the efficiency with which new genomic medicines progress from discovery to real application in disease prevention and treatment.
The success of mRNA-based vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a large increase in interest in other nucleic acid medicines that are delivered to cells via nanoparticle delivery systems. Similar technologies are being researched to enable breakthrough vaccines for other diseases, as well as targeted treatments for cancer, rare diseases and more. However, there remain barriers to successful development and manufacture of nanodelivered intracellular drugs. The encapsulation of the nucleic acids within protective nanoparticles (NPs), such as lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), is perhaps the most critical stage in the manufacturing process. Currently there are two major encapsulation technology approaches used: In research, microfluidic mixing devices are commonly used as they can quickly produce large formulation libraries while minimizing waste. However, these mixers cannot accommodate commercial-scale production volumes. Impingement jet mixing (IJM) technology was chosen as an available means to achieve large scale commercial production during the COVID pandemic, by stacking many units in parallel. However, this approach is less controllable and is wasteful and inefficient for discovery.
Micropore is pioneering an alternative and patented micromixing/encapsulation technology called Advanced Crossflow (AXF) that combines the size-control and uniformity advantages of microfluidic approaches with an ability to scale up to commercial volumes, simply by increasing instrument size and material flow. The RAP-IDD project will build on this AXF technology with the aim of achieving the 'holy grail' of intracellular drug production: A single, highly-efficient, but flexible, multi-product technology platform that can span multiple phases of the drug development and production pathway -- from lab scale to commercial scale -- without the need to redevelop and re-optimise processes at different stages. The project will undertake research to de-risk and validate this approach.
Bio-based manufacturing through the use of microorganisms offers exciting potential for the production of valuable chemicals and materials as an alternative to fossil fuel based equivalents for more sustainable chemical manufacturing.
Bioreactors are an important component of any bio-based chemical production process. However, available bioreactors have been developed to serve the biopharmaceutical industry, producing high-value, low-volume products, with high R&D budgets required for process development and scaling.
Existing bioreactors produce low yields and are difficult to scale. This results in resource intensive, costly processes that are difficult and time consuming (5-10 years) to commercialise for bio-based chemical production that cannot compete with petroleum derived equivalents.
Sterling Bio Machines aim to revisit the bioreactor design from a first principles approach and redesign for the needs of sustainable bio-based manufacturing. Our novel bioreactor concept separates the functions required for optimum processing in a bioreactor environment to be controlled independently, providing superior control over conditions across the bioreactor volume, at all scales, enabling rapid process development from lab to commercial production scale.
In collaboration with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), CFD modelling will be used to explore the concept by simulating a typical aerobic fermentation process VS a standard stir tank bioreactor to demonstrate the benefits for sustainable bio-based manufacturing using microorganisms.
The chemicals industry must decouple from the fossil dependency of the past and become a planet positive force for the future by embracing new sustainable raw materials and manufacturing processes.
The BIOSECT project focuses on next generation sustainable ingredients for cleaning products (e.g. liquid and powder laundry detergents) and other applications. The aim of the project is to assess the potential of new bio-based feedstocks and/or bio-manufacturing processes to replace existing fossil-based feedstocks and/or conventional chemical manufacturing processes.
The project will centre on two ingredients used in large volumes in detergents today:
(1) A solvent used in the production of laundry liquids and pods, and
(2) Chelating agents that are used to bond with metals ions to improve washing performance
The project will assess the feasibility of providing drop-in replacements or substitution of these ingredients with materials produced by bio-manufacturing using renewable carbon feedstocks, such as sugars from agricultural wastes or carbon dioxide captured from industrial waste gases. The project will assess the technical feasibility, the likely cost implications, and the potential environmental benefits of these new bio-derived materials.
Transitioning to a sustainable bio-based chemicals industry will not only help the UK meet Net Zero commitments, it also will also enable the industry to meet the growing public and industrial demand for eco-friendly chemicals and products, and so help deliver the UK's clean growth strategy.
ENHANCE aims to improve the development and manufacturing process of Sixfold's innovative Mergo(r) formulations for the delivery of siRNA therapeutics to diseased cells. ENHANCE combines multidisciplinary partners with highly complementary expertise and successful project delivery experience, with rapid scientific and commercial progress.
Compared to small-molecules and antibodies, siRNAs hold the ability to act on a virtually unrestricted choice of otherwise 'undruggable' therapeutic targets, with high potency and specificity \[1\]. siRNAs have the potential to treat a range of disease indications. Pioneering regulatory approvals of Alnylam's siRNA therapeutics for liver disorders in 2018-2019 \[2\] validated clinical and commercial opportunities for such therapies. Nevertheless, current delivery approaches remain suboptimal (e.g. GalNAc-conjugates, lipid nanoparticles, viral vectors) due to limitations surrounding cell-specific targeting, cargo-loading capacity, high toxicity and complex/expensive manufacturing, highlighting the need for novel formulations to increase addressable disease indications \[3\].
Mergo(r) formulations address these challenges through their modular design, comprising a central RNA-nanoscaffold that can be functionalized with therapeutics and targeting molecules, recognizing biomarkers on specific diseased cells of interest only, in turn significantly reducing toxic side-effects in other cells/tissues. Following promising _in vitro/in vivo_ results, competitive safety and favourable cost-profiles demonstrated by Mergo(r) formulations, the technology has reached sufficient maturity to initiate the process of building upon formulation capabilities. In turn, this will support and accelerate the development pathways for Mergo(r) formulations to ensure scalability in later-stage development.
ENHANCE identifies and addresses manufacturing bottlenecks via Design of Experiments-based high-throughput strategies, enhancing the robustness of manufacturing processes to improve resource efficiency and throughput. CPI's cross-functional and tailored expertise in advancing innovations in manufacturing for tech transfer will help de-risk and accelerate the route to market, enabling Mergo(r) formulations to make a secure transition in its development stages to scale up.
Sixfold's comprehensive IP portfolio and licensing strategy engages the broader biopharmaceutical supply chain, generating diverse benefits to the wider UK life sciences sector.
\[1\]Lam\_J.K.W\_et\_al.\__Mol\_Ther\_Nucleic\_Acids_\_2015\_4(9):e252\. \[2\]Debacker\_A.J\_et\_al.\__Mol\_Ther._\_2020\_28(8):1759-1771\.
\[3\]Payne\_D\__Nature_\_574\_S1\_2019\.
A new wave of RNA-therapeutics has the potential to transform outcomes for patients with cancers which do not respond to existing small molecule or antibody treatments. RNA-therapeutics have come to the forefront on the back of Covid vaccine success, and many Biotechs are now developing these for currently non-responding patient groups. This £6Bn potential market of new RNA-therapeutics needs a safe drug-delivery technology: to protect the therapeutics from degradation within the body, to target them to the tumour, and to release them inside the cells.
Vitarka is a UK life sciences technology SME which is developing a novel intracellular delivery technology, EndoPore. EndoPore is a drug delivery technology which will carry RNA-therapeutics through the body and then release them within tumour cells - opening up many currently validated but undruggable targets for new anti-cancer treatments.
Through this grant, we will substantially de-risk the development path by establishing formulation and GMP-grade large-scale manufacturing of our technology for first-in-human clinical trials. We will start validating clinically relevant formulations and define the roadmap for regulatory interaction. This will position the programme for larger scale private investment, and for partnership with biotechs for clinical trials, thereby enabling rapid technological and commercial impact for Vitarka and the UK.
The speed with which SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were formulated, approved and rolled out to the UK public has been truly remarkable and unprecedented. In particular the development of mRNA-LNPs proved not only very fast but also highly effective compared with protein based vaccines, promising a new era of therapeutic/vaccine development in 'one hundred days or less'. Despite such rapid progress and promise, the development of mRNA-LNP technology has been a compromise between speed and utility; instability of the therapeutic/vaccine has proved to be a serious drawback requiring an ultra low temperature (-80°C) cold-chain which has directly increased the cost and complexity of vaccine rollout as well as limiting vaccination programs in high income countries. Furthermore because of the extreme fragility of mRNA, the therapeutic/vaccine dose varies depending on the integrity of the cold-chain. Based on results to date we believe we can overcome many of the manufacturing bottlenecks such as storage and dispensing, as well as transport at ambient temperature by developing a universal non-toxic stabiliser that protects the mRNA therapeutic/vaccine from the point of manufacturing through to stockpiling and transport to the clinic. We are confident that the use of our molecular stabilisers will radically change the market for RNA therapeutics/vaccines by allowing the manufacture, storage, transport and delivery of consistently intact and highly active mRNA therapeutic/vaccine treatments even in environments that are lacking a functional cold-chain and distribution system.
With the growing global demand for biological medicines to address new therapeutic areas, the BIOPURE project will deliver a step change in monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) purification through the implementation of radically new and disruptive technology to recover mAbs-products in the solid-state directly from cell-free culture fluids. BIOPURE promises to lower manufacturing and purchase of equipment costs with a smaller footprint. It simplifies logistic chains and enhances environmental sustainability by avoiding extensive use of chemicals, compared to the standard chromatography-based platforms. It opens the doors to new possibilities and biomedicines so far too challenging economically or technologically. As end result, the citizens will have access to a more affordable and diverse selection of new generation biomedicines. The proposed membrane-based technology has already been proved at the laboratory scale (TRL4) as a cheaper and easily scalable alternative to protein A chromatography for mAb purification. The next step is to demonstrate the generalized efficiency of the technology and scale it up to TRL6 through the design of a fully automatized prototype that will be operated continuously and capable of compliance with quality and regulations for biopharmaceutical productions. In addition to technological development, the new BIOPURE technology will be validated with real market players, leading to verifying the planned business model, the IPR management plan, and the associated financial planning included in the go-to-market strategy. By achieving the main objectives of BIOPURE, it is expected that the adoption of membrane-assisted method for mAb-products purification will provide a breakthrough advancement in terms of productivity efficiency via continuous manufacturing, and cost reduction via process intensification.
In the UK, 235,000 tonnes of Lithium-ion Batteries (LIBs) derived from Electric Vehicles are expected to reach end-of-life by 2040\. Additionally, planned Gigafactories are expected to produce up to 15 kt/year of scrap. LIBs are increasingly found in consumer products (e.g. hoovers, lawn mowers) with a predicted 140,000 tonnes of consumer LIBs reaching end-of-life by 2025\.
Yet the UK loses £13.63m/year from waste electricals/batteries due to lack of advanced recovery technologies \[MaterialFocus,2021\], threatening 114,000 direct automotive jobs linked to Gigafactory potential by 2040 \[T&E,2021\]. Currently all UK end-of-life LIBs are exported to Europe for pyrometallurgical-based recycling, consuming large amounts of energy and resulting in environmental emissions. Not all materials are recovered, specifically graphite and lithium, now listed as critical raw materials by the UK government (high risk of supply problems).
Furthermore, under the EU Green Deal, all LIBs must contain minimum levels of recycled content by 2030, yet the UK has no on-shore supply of critical materials from recycled sources. This threatens the export capabilities of UK manufacturers.
**Lithium Salvage (Li-Sal)** aims to establish the UKs first LIB recycling plant in the Tees Valley. Underpinned by cutting-edge fundamental research, they have developed a proof-of-concept for a low impact, clean and capital light recycling process that will maximise the quantity and quality of materials extracted from LIBs; and reclaim graphite and lithium. This project will deepen the industrial research required to demonstrate the optimum processes route, ensure systems scalability and commercial viability.
Together with project partners from across the battery supply chain, Li-Sal is supported by: metals and materials experts from **Teesside University (TU)** and **Centre for Process Innovation (CPI)**; waste experts and feedstock suppliers **PA Moody Recycling (GAP);** and commodity market specialists **Pennine Energy**.
Once built, the proposed facility will on-shore recycling in the UK and provide materials 'critical' to Gigafactory and renewable technology supply-chains. This will increase the attractiveness of the Tees Valley for up-stream investment in Gigafactories and provide a critical supply of materials required for a Net Zero Industrial Cluster in the Northeast of England. The proposed factory will create new jobs (with a significant job multiplier effect upstream and downstream of the plant), drive revenue and help delivery of the Governments levelling up agenda, whilst putting the UK at the forefront of sustainable recycling innovation, supporting the Net Zero by 2050 journey.
The potential of nucleic acids as vaccines and therapeutics is only just being realised and the success of the Covid mRNA vaccines is due in part to the rate at which scale-up and manufacture was possible. VaxEquity is a biotechnology company seeking to develop novel, second-generation RNA based vaccines and therapeutics. Working in collaboration with the Centre for Process Innovation, this project will drive efficiencies in the manufacturing process for second generation RNA vaccines and therapeutics based on self-amplifying RNA and, specifically, for amulti-valent saRNA flu vaccine. The project will identify and define experimentally the Critical Quality Attributes (CQAs) i.e. the key properties for saRNA and the manufacturing variables that impact these CQAs for the process of RNA transcription (the creation of active RNA molecules from the more stable DNA template) in batch and fed batch processes. The process of capping the RNA to enhance stability, processing and translation will be evaluated in tandem with the manufacturing process and as a separate reaction after the primary saRNA synthesis is complete. Studies will be run at small, laboratory scale to identify the optimised conditions and the factors that critically impinge on these conditions. Optimised conditions will be tested to establish scalability for the subsequent manufacturing of a broad-acting saRNA influenza vaccine to proceed into preclinical and clinical development. Manufacturing nucleic acid-based medicines is expensive and through the optimisation of conditions for saRNA, which has the potential to reduce dose compared to mRNA by \>10-fold, significant savings from both raw materials and the size of future dose requirements can be achieved.
The benefits of the project for the UK will be to identify, establish and protect an optimised process for saRNA manufacture in a partnership between the UK's leading independent technology innovation centre that has the right experts and practical capabilities for effective innovation of complex nucleic acid therapies and UK-based RNA vaccine and therapeutics biotechnology company VaxEquity.
Currently mRNA medicines are synthesized through in vitro transcription (IVT) reaction. The presence of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is one of the major quality concerns to mRNA medicines. Besides, the raw material cost in IVT reactions is very high but their utilisation efficiency is very low. This collaborative research project aims to use more cost-effective reagents and recycle most reagents through innovative purification methods to generate high purity mRNA at shorter processing steps and at significantly reduced manufacturing cost.
Oligonucleotides (oligos) are sequences of nucleotides monomers which usually contain between 15-25 nucleotides/ nucleotide-analogues, they offer promising treatment for a wide range of medical conditions. There are now 15 oligo drugs which have been approved between the EMA and FDA. In recent years, an **increasing number of oligos in clinical trials** have shown excellent results for diseases with large patient populations. For example, Inclisiran, an oligo developed for the treatment of cardiovascular disease (thousands of patients), was approved in Europe in 2020 and is available on the NHS since 2021\. It is estimated Inclisiran will treat 300,000 patients in the UK in the next three years.
While Solid Phase Synthesis (SPS) is the dominant manufacturing process to produce oligos it presents several limitations. The main challenges comprise: **the lack of scalability** (~10-20kg batch sizes maximum), the **high costs** (£800-£1000/g of oligos) and the **heavy environmental burden** associated with the process (~4300kg/kg PMI). This creates a critical need for sustainable, ton-per-annum-scale oligo production routes to enable oligos to deliver patient benefits in large populations.
The Grand Challenge 'GC3' consortium (comprising Novartis, AstraZeneca, Alnylam, Exactmer, CPI) is developing Nanostar Sieving, a **breakthrough new technology based on Liquid Phase Synthesis** (LPS) to manufacture oligos. For oligo manufacture, this platform is positioned to provide ease of scaling under GMP conditions (100kg/batch), with high crude purity oligos (70-90%) and use of similar phosphoramidite monomer equivalents (1.5 equivalents/cycle). Maximising Efficiency of Liquid-phase Oligo Synthesis (MELOS) is a UK based collaboration between Exactmer, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), CPI and AstraZeneca, seeking to build on the success of GC3\. This 24-month project will focus on **a step change in the process efficiency and sustainability of the Nanostar Sieving platform** for the synthesis of oligos on large scale. The current chemistry will be further developed by using Nanostar hubs and monomers with better membrane selectivities and higher solubilities. Further step changes include integration of a solvent recycling loop within the Nanostar Sieving process, seeking a **reduction of 40% in the total Process Mass Intensity** (PMI) compared to SPS technology. A solvent drying device will allow in-process water removal that will reduce required phosphoramidites equivalents to close to stoichiometric (i.e., <1.1 equivalents). In-line, real-time analysis will be implemented to monitor the quality of the recycled solvent. Furthermore, this work is required to ensure the **highest quality of product is obtained with minimal environmental impact, and at reduced costs**.
Intellegens Ltd is seeking to develop a novel ML-powered digital tool to provide organisations with a user interface for oligonucleotide characterisation and impurity prediction. Intellegens will collaborate with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) to build an extensive database of associated structures and intelligent look-up logic defined and coded into the software to create specific profiles for target molecules.
Nucleic Acid Therapies (NATs) is a major emerging new class of medicines, offering enormous potential to treat a range of common and rare diseases with typically reduced timescales for development that can be quicker than other classes of drugs. In addition, NATs provide opportunities to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their genome sequence. However, the broader clinical application of NATs can be limited by current methods of manufacture and delivery.
Oligonucleotides are segmented into several classes, including antisense, ribozymes, aptamers, miRNA, CPG/Immunostimulatory and RNAi. Many therapeutic areas and indications are currently targeted by oligo therapies from oncology (29%), Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders (12%) and genetic disorders (9%) to cardiovascular, respiratory, ophthalmology, gastrointestinal and infectious diseases. The global oligonucleotide development pipeline currently has 660 in preclinical, 70 phase-1, 94 phase-2, 19 phase-3 and 13 marketed, with a larger proportion targeting patient populations \>500k. 40% of approvals have occurred within 5-years (e.g. Inclisiran), providing a positive signal/confidence that oligonucleotides are a valid therapeutic area \[NICE,2021\]. This is encouraging more investment at the discovery end.
Impurity prediction tools designed for small molecules are not sophisticated enough to predict impurities for oligonucleotides. With improved mechanistic understanding and screening approaches, more potent oligo candidates with better safety profiles can be identified for treatment of an increasing range of diseases and patient populations. The recent surge in approved oligonucleotide therapeutics indicates imminent potential as oligos are of intermediate size with much-improved selectivity towards the target and fewer off-target effects than small molecules \[Thakur,2022\].
Intellegens addresses the unmet market need for a digital tool capable of impurity prediction and characterisation of the large and complex nature of oligonucleotides. Subsequently, reducing development costs and facilitating manufacturing scale-up.
Greater Manchester (GM) has world class research capability in developing advanced materials and has a growing materials innovation cluster within the city region. Globally there is a gap in companies able to provide sustainable materials for manufacturing supply chains, and also a market failure in industries ability to scale up and adopt sustainable materials in manufacturing applications. This presents a major economic opportunity for GM -- and there are plans to realise this through GM Combined Authority's (GMCA's) and Rochdale Development Agency's (RDA's) development of a Centre of Expertise in Advanced Materials & Sustainability (CEAMS), which will be built in Atom Valley/Rochdale.
Our programme, "Supply Chain Pilots for the Centre of Expertise in Advanced Materials & Sustainability (p-CEAMS)", supports GMCAs ambitions in the development of CEAMS, leveraging GM's existing strength in materials research, alongside the UK's High Value Manufacturing Catapult's (HVMC's) competency in building supply chain capability.
Our programme:
1) Addresses current supply chain gaps in provision of sustainable advanced materials by:
\*Connecting regional businesses to National supply chain needs in advanced materials including polymers, composites, biomaterials, technical textiles, coatings, and digital manufacturing of materials (Materials 4.0)
\*Supporting regional businesses to develop solutions to these needs
\*Demonstrating scale up AND application of new advanced materials and digital technologies in industrial processes, through collaborative pilot projects
2) Supports the development of CEAMS and ensures this becomes a long-term capability for GM by transferring activity and follow-on work into the CEAMS -- creating starter pipelines for this investment
3) Uses the activity to catalyse strategic links to inward investment, accelerating advanced materials business clustering in GM through collaborative creation of new material supply chain enterprises, and through the attraction of existing advanced material supply chain companies to GM.
Our consortium, comprised of Rochdale Development Agency (RDA), University of Manchester (UoM) Institutes (Royce, GEIC, SMI Hub), National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Science and Technologies Facilities Council (UKRI-STFC), and the UK's High Value Manufacturing Catapult, will exploit existing infrastructure within GM and nationally to catalyse cross-sector and cross-supply chain collaborations, developing viable business models to ensure quality and sustainability of AdM systems that deliver innovations, revenue and productivity/GVA benefits for GM businesses and the region .
ReVentas see plastic waste as a valuable resource that has yet to be harnessed until now.
Currently only a small percentage of post-consumer and post-industrial plastics are recycled typically into low value applications. However, the vast majority of waste is still landfilled or incinerated with the valuable Polyethylene and Polypropylene contained inside lost from the circular economy.
Our technology changes that by taking this material at scale, separating, purifying and tuning the Polyethylene and Polypropylene to deliver a unique virgin-like resin designed for its end application.
This is an entirely new way to extract value from waste plastics and enable it to be used in vastly more applications including food packaging, films and consumer products solving the problem of single use plastic once and for all.
This project will complete the Front End Engineering Designs (FEED) necessary for scaling this technology from pilot scale to a 10ktonne plant, capable of taking post-consumer plastic waste and turning it into a virgin like replacement, in a process which will disruptively change recycling.
The project will result in a new, high skilled jobs in the Tees Valley, while helping the plastic recycling and virgin plastic production taking place become circular and making Tees Valley a world leader in renewable technology.
With the UK's aim to ban combustion-engine sales by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the UK urgently needs highly innovative solutions to meet these targets. It also needs to maintain competitiveness in a global EV market expected to reach $68bn in 2022\. Project CONSTELLATION is aimed at improving the performance of EV battery cells, by bringing together the expertise of strategically important UK partners (Addionics, James Durrans, Centre for Process Innovation, Warwick Manufacturing Group) to improve the competitiveness of the UK battery supply chain and take technology already developed to TRL7, ready towards full commercialisation. Key objectives for this project include developing new verticals in cell manufacture through improvements to the manufacturing efficiency, performance and environmental profile of cells optimised for the automotive market. These will be achieved through improvements in novel current collectors designed by the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the formulation of customised electrodes in lithium-ion batteries using coating that can be robotically automated. New verticals will help reduce the time for scaling cell production resulting in lower costs for manufacturing and cost of ownership for the end-user. The project will utilise technology developed by Addionics for 3D current collector fabrication that has shown significant battery performance improvements. It will build on the earlier success of InnovateUK-funded project STELLAR to now take the work to TRL7\. Project CONSTELLATION will demonstrate minimal disruption to existing Gigafactories as it represents a 'drop-in' solution whereby affordable electrodes can be supplied to a variety of facilities. The output of the project will be commercialised directly in the UK and beyond.
Accelerating the adoption of emission-free electric vehicles (EV) is widely seen as a key contributor to reaching Net Zero and reducing the release of greenhouse gases in the environment. Whilst conventional liquid electrolyte-based lithium ion batteries (LIB) are the incumbent technology for powering EV, solid state battery (SSB) technology is expected to rapidly provide safety and performance improvement compared to LIB. In this project, UK-based partners will contribute to the development of a multi-layer, solid state pouch cell with specifications aligned with the need of electric vehicle pack developers. Ilika will design and fabricate the SSB cell; Nexeon will develop a high silicon content electrode based on its low expansion NSP-2 material to be used in the anode of the SSB cell; Centre for Process Innovation will formulate inks with the silicon powders; University of St Andrews will characterise interface and materials interactions; University College London and Imperial College London will model the expansion and contraction of SSB with silicon anode at single-layer, multi-layer and pack level; HSSMI will provide recommendations for reduced environmental impact and improved end-of-life outcomes.
Decarbonisation of the world economy is driving an increasing demand for Li-ion batteries, particularly for electric vehicles. The performance of this type of battery technology is heavily dependent on the cathode, of which the layered NMC-type is increasingly popular for delivering high energy densities. Manufacture of NMC precursor materials is typically carried out using conventional batch processes, which bring deficiencies in both production efficiency and quality, impacting battery cost and performance.
NiTech Continuous Oscillating Baffled Reactors/Crystallisers (COBR/C) offer an innovative route for the production such materials. COBR/C technology has proven application in the speciality chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing sectors, where significant benefits from a continuous processing approach have been demonstrated: substantial reduction in the scale of production units, improved quantity and process control, and access to new processing regimes. In turn this allows manipulation of the chemical reaction and solid-state formation processes that can lead to improved final product performance.
The aim of this project is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of manufacturing NMC precursor materials using COBR/C technology, provide required process data for future scale-up to commercial scale, define the process parameters that allow advantageous manipulation of the NMC properties (specifically in the generation of longer-lifetime single-crystal cathode morphologies), and allow a definition of the benefits of continuous processing over current technologies.
Successful execution of the project would lead to an innovative, efficient, and flexible manufacturing approach being available for industrial scale production, plus the potential of improved performance of the materials produced, a reduction in energy demand for manufacture and a lower capital cost to implement.
The project brings together existing proven technologies -- NMC single crystal precursor synthesis processes and continuous manufacturing, in a synergistic project that could make a significant impact on the target sector.
The project involves NiTech Solutions Ltd as COBR/C process technology provider. Know-how on the chemical & and solid-state processes and cell production and testing is led by the University of Sheffield. CPI will provide facilities and resources for the COBR/C experimental program. Input on raw materials specification, cell KPIs, customer requirements and consumer needs will be provided by Britishvolt. A successful outcome for the project has the potential to make a significant impact on the UK battery supply chain and strengthen the nations position in battery materials production and battery materials technology.
TECHNO, an acronym standing for "Temperature monitoring, Cooling and Heating during Normal Operation in a demonstration battery pack", is a project to develop an innovative battery pack for cars and any other type of electric vehicle. For a battery to deliver its best performance over a long life, the temperature of all the cells in it must be kept uniformly at the right operating temperature. TECHNO is the first system designed to be able to do this. A conventional battery thermal management system (BTMS) struggles to maintain a uniform temperature because the battery itself generates an incredibly large amount of heat, especially during fast charging. Besides the obvious safety concern, the high temperature permanently damages the cells, and so reduces the battery life. In cold winter weather, parts of the battery --- or even part of an individual large cell --- may be too cold to operate efficiently, causing these cells to be damaged and putting strain on the other parts. The two challenges faced by a conventional BTMS are that it does not have sufficient information to identify hot and cold spots, and that it does not have the ability to cool or heat them independently of the rest of the battery. This is where TECHNO, with its capacity for active differential thermal management, comes in.
Working to the requirements of industry partners, who manufacture batteries and battery management systems, the TECHNO project will create an intelligent battery module which can monitor and control its own temperature profile. Each cell in the battery is monitored continually by an array of thin printed temperature and pressure sensors, which pass their information onto a BTMS built into the battery module, which receives its instructions from, and reports back to, an external battery management system (BMS). The internal BTMS combines the sensor information to build a three-dimensional map of the temperature inside the battery. It then uses this map to determine how the temperature at different positions is changing, and what needs to be done. It then takes action, by differentially heating or cooling at the point it is required using an advanced liquid cooling system and low-power electric heaters, positioned in contact with the cells to keep them all working safely and efficiently at their optimum temperature.
Ribonucleic acid (or RNA) based therapy is the treatment or prevention of diseases using RNA-based molecules. The recent sucess of messenger RNA vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential of this technology and greatly increased research and industrial interest. RNA offers the potential to produce almost any functional protein or peptide in the human body by introducing mRNA as a vaccine or therapeutic agent.
RNA therapeutics and vaccines often require specific, targeted delivery to be effective medicines, and a leading technology platform is Lipid Nanoparticles, along with alternative Nano Delivery Systems. This applies to a range of RNA based therapies such as mRNA/self-amplifying RNA, siRNA, antisense oligos, as well as cutting-edge and potentially curative therapeutic approaches such as gene editing technology, via CRISPR/Cas9, base or prime editing.
There is an opportunity to "anchor" commercial scale design and manufacturing of these new classes of therapies in the UK and act as a global hub for research, development activities and trials -- but given the early stage of this technology it requires investment in early to mid-stage R&D to solve scientific, manufacturing, clinical and commercial challenges. Challenges to address include: creating more thermostable medicines; understanding and controlling immunogenicity and adverse reactions, developing better characterisation methods; more efficient and high productivity process development and manufacturing; and targeting a range of different organs and cell types to enable the treatment of a wider range of diseases.
We are proposing to upgrade existing facilities to create state of the art capability, along with an ambitious, large scale research programme focused on building the knowhow to create disruptive innovation in the field of product design, formulation, manufacture and characterisation. This includes the ability to rationally design next generation LNPs, create a step change in the area of in vitro methods to predict drug/ vaccine human clinical response, and finally develop a digitally enabled LNP manufacturing process that will act as a lighthouse project for advanced manufacture in Pharma.
With public investment we will create the knowhow and capability to catalyse an explosion of R&D investment in the UK - increasing the translation of our high quality academic base, boosting industrial R&D, clinical trials and ultimately creating a new ecosystem via company growth, enhanced productivity, onshoring and supply chain development.
This project is about the development of a new business model and capability to enable the utilisation of industrial waste gases from the foundation industries, to generate affordable feedstocks and chemicals for use in the production of consumer products in the UK. Such an industrial symbiosis model will displace the import of non-sustainable materials from outside of the UK currently used to supply the consumer goods industry thus building a new UK value chain whilst simultaneously helping to mitigate the waste emissions from the foundation industries (specifically paper, chemicals, and steel). Aside from the technical aspects of the project, additionally, the business model development will frame the economic incentives that will likely be required to make the model work (e.g., carbon taxes on imports of fossil-based materials). The project will uniquely bring together partners from across the whole supply/value chain to achieve this.
The APC is anticipating a significant deficit in locally manufactured anode material over the next decade and Deregallera stand poised to exploit this opportunity by moving to manufacture their lithium and sodium-ion anode active material at scale in the UK. Large scale investment in chemical plant comes with a high level of risk that this project reduces by exploring ways to expand the top-down and bottom-up parameters on production quantities, identifying the optimum size of the chemical plant and extending the existing techno-economic study out to 10,000 tonnes-per-annum production.
Although CHO cells are one of the most highly employed cell lines in bioproduction (with \>£100 Billion market), current commercially available CHO cells inability to adapt and restore cell balance leads to stress-induced apoptosis and undesirable protein modifications. Further, the biotechnology industry lacks in-line methods to examine the actual cell viability during production in small or large-scale experiments. These pain points limit CHO-based recombinant protein production's efficiency and yield, leading to a considerable waste of resources, time and materials in manufacturing.
GeneNet Technology, in collaboration with CPI (Centre for Process Innovation) and Taiwan based Cytena BPS and Instant NanoBiosensor, is here to engineer a stress sensing genetic circuit and AI cell embedded to current bioproduction (incubator) in real-time testing method. Combining cutting edge technology from Cytena BPS' next-generation bioreactor, which allows culture fine-tuning and real-time data collection from culturing and physiological conditions, and Instant NanoBiosensors' Fiber Optic Particle Plasmon Resonance technology which detects biomarker expression, we will gather comprehensive culturing, physiological and biomarker data during CHO cell bioproduction. This comprehensive data will be fed into GeneNet's ground-breaking technology, Artificial neural network (ANN) genetic circuits. ANN genetic circuits are the cutting-edge technology in synthetic biology and genetic engineering. In the past decade, synthetic genetic circuits only apply simple logic (AND/OR/NOT) gates to biocomputing. GeneNet's ground-breaking technology makes genetic circuits analogous to deep learning computers, turning CHO cells into smarter AI computers. All this will enable us to engineer smart, stress-sensing CHO cells to maximise protein production efficiency and yield, benefiting our downstream clients and wider industry and society as a whole.
Genetic Microdevices Ltd has developed a small device - the QbQ chip- that can analyse proteins in blood with unprecedented sensitivity, speed and cost. The chip can detect minute amounts of disease biomarkers in less than 15 minutes for a cost that resembles that of Lateral Flow Assays. Once the QbQ test chip becomes available it will revolutionise Point-of-Care testing. It will enable detection of conditions that carry biomarkers in blood, much earlier than is currently possible. For example early detection of Dementia can massively improve therapeutic outcome, since for the first time there are drugs available that treat Alzheimer's at its cause to slow down neurodegeneration. Similarly in Cardiovascular disease, detecting low levels of biomarkers that are trending up in blood can create a much more accurate risk profile for future illness. The same is true for cancer biomarkers where early detection is absolute key for therapeutic outcome. However the ability to detect disease much earlier must be accompanied by high speed and low cost per test. Because only then, can screening processes in the NHS become viable.
The QbQ system has already demonstrated its superior performance in our lab. What remains to be done is to create a small benchtop machine that is close to a commercial form and validate it with our collaborators in two assays: One for cardiovascular disease and one for dementia.
Once the technology is validated it will be ready for early deployment in academic settings to accelerate development of advanced diagnostic panels for Dementia, CVD, Cancer and many other conditions. Ultimately we shall further develop those tools into fully certified diagnostic tools for the Point-of-Care. At that point the QbQ will be placed in hospitals, universities, pharmacies, and GP's for testing of a wide spectrum of conditions.
The project is deeply collaborative, it brings together Genetic Microdevices, The Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health and Centre for Process Innovation. This wealth of know-how ensures optimal delivery of the technology to the patient.
The needs of older women are largely ignored in many areas of life, and this is particularly true when it comes to sport and exercise. Yet sustaining fitness and activity levels for women as they age has life-changing and lasting benefits in relation to physical health, happiness and mental wellbeing.
In the older female population, a particular barrier to remaining physically active is lower limb pain and injury risks. Women aged 50+ face particular barriers to getting and/or staying physically active. As well as an increased incidence of pain, discomfort and injury, this group are not well-supported in terms of assistive and appropriate sports technologies, sportswear and footwear -- which tend to be developed for, and marketed to, young people.
In fact, the majority of exercise and sport-related injury prevention research is conducted on young, often male, adults, largely in the context of elite sports. The effects of gender and ageing on bodily biomechanics and physiology remain poorly understood, making it challenging to remove or even address these barriers and changes to injury risks. Furthermore, conventional biomechanics studies are limited to laboratory-based research with small participant numbers, preventing large-scale data insights of normal people, doing normal sports, in normal settings. There is an urgent need to progress our understanding of female sports biomechanics through life, and develop relevant technologies and products to support inclusive sports participation by women of all ages.
Project MISFIT aims to address this gap in the Healthy Ageing space by developing a new movement analytics service that is designed specifically for older women. This will provide evidence-based information regarding bespoke exercise regimes and injury prevention to support continued safe participation in physical activity.
MISFIT will build on KYMIRA's award-winning sports apparel solutions, which will be adapted for older females. The project uses smart garments equipped with sensors and pressure measuring insoles, to capture and integrate kinematic (movement), kinetic (force) and physiological data during everyday sports. MISFIT will enable large-scale data-gathering to provide population-level insights into injury mechanisms and optimum exercise regimes as women get older. MISFIT will translate the data and learnings to provide a sports advisory service to users. In a further innovation, award-winning sports footwear developer Ida Sports will use the service to inform the user-centric design of a new range of sports footwear to support women to continue in sport participation as they age.
**BoobyBiome is developing breakthrough breast milk-derived live biotherapeutic products (LBPs) for infants with compromised microbiomes**. The microbiome describes the collection of microorganisms, including bacteria, which reside on and in us. A healthy microbiome is crucial in regulating digestive, immune and metabolic functions. Human breast milk (HBM) contributes 40% of the beneficial bacteria in an infant's gut. Without access to HBM, babies are vulnerable to microbiome-related diseases (necrotising enterocolitis (NEC), sepsis, diabetes, IBS etc.). Most at-risk are preterms, the largest population of neonatal mortality in the UK (8% of births). Despite this, preterm disease remains an underfunded sector in healthcare research, and there is a strong demand for new treatments.
BoobyBiome is developing a world-first, **multi-strain** LBP to improve the health outcome of preterms at a reduced cost to standard interventions. Our LBP will mimic the microbiota of HBM, restoring the gut to a healthy state by replenishing the bacteria that these babies are lacking. Our product will contain a community of strains informed by rigorous scientific testing and precise characterisation of the HBM. **Our clinically validated multi-strain LBP** **will fill an unmet need in the expanding microbiome market**, with current products poorly regulated and containing minimal bacterial strains sourced from infant stool.
With this project, BoobyBiome aims to develop a clinical LBP product for NEC prevention in preterms. During the project, multiple clinically relevant strains will be formulated to a proof-of-concept LBP. Subsequently, the LBP will be safety tested and manufacturing processes scaled up with expert regulatory, CMC and commercial support. The key to the completion of these milestones is our team. BoobyBiome is a female-led team of highly qualified scientists with entrepreneurial expertise whose success lies in their diverse skill sets. The team is based at the Institute of Child Health, UCL, collaborating with esteemed infant microbiologist Dr Bajaj-Elliott. Assisting the team are non-executive directors David Ford and Andrew Martin (New Atlantis Ventures Ltd), who have substantial experience in early-stage science and technology ventures. Further, Elizabeth Klein, with a proven track record in the UK's Life Sciences investment community, provides strategic and commercial guidance and will help the team raise funds alongside existing investors for future clinical work.
Ultimately, BoobyBiome aims to deliver clinically tested, commercial products accessible to all babies with compromised microbiomes, including C-section and formula-fed babies. We are committed to producing clinically validated LBPs to exert real change in the healthcare sector.
This project aims to assess the feasibility of scaling up production of a 'Colon Kit' a research model of the human large intestine. This will meet the pressing need for effective and affordable models of the human large intestine for research and personalised medicine.
This product can provide an accessible, and affordable cutting edge research tool for labs. The product also has diagnostic and prognostic potential. The tool can be used to carry out patient specific investigations and treatment screens to better identify effective treatments.
The Human Microbiome Market is valued at $376.3 Million (2019) with CAGR of 21.8% from 2020 to 2027 (VMR, 2019). The importance of the microbiome to health and disease is increasingly recognised, and health and pharmaceutical product development aims to address this need.
Aelius Biotech are a research organisation who specialise in lab models of the digestive tract, offering a range of research tools to help understand and develop formulations to improve and de-risk product development and get successful products to market.
Aelius has developed and tested an early-stage prototype integrated large intestinal model -- the first of its kind that includes a cell culture system that integrates modelling of the intestinal mucus bi-layer and epithelium with the microbiome. This has potential to be a huge development in digestive modelling providing the first system capable of modelling luminal, mucus and epithelial phases of digestion in a continuous, integrated system from mouth to terminal large intestine. This project aims to make this technology accessible globally to research labs.
This proposed feasibility project would draw on the expertise of CPI in 'design for manufacture'. CPI as part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult will investigate feasibility of design and manufacturing options, trial and comparison to current state-of-the art to ensure that the device meets industry needs, is usable and is acceptable to users, thereby increasing the likelihood of adoption by customers.
The project includes validation of the model with commercial products to generate case studies and validation data to promote the model.
The project aims to develop a UK PEMD supply chain that will combine cost effective material supply and cold rolling of a new high strength non-magnetic steel with mass production process innovations that can deliver patented lamination designs. These laminations can then be stacked into novel rotor and stator sub-assemblies to support mass production of more efficient and more sustainable electric machines with wide-ranging application across transport, energy and industrial sectors.
The project will focus on the development of material supply and cold rolling processes for cost effective supply of the new high strength non-magnetic steel. Blank forming and joining processes to combine non-magnetic steel with electrical steel will be developed using latest joining technologies. Coating of the patented laminations will use novel insulation/adhesive coating materials, to enable automation of lamination stacking for novel rotor and stator sub-assembly designs supporting mass production of more efficient and more sustainable electric machine designs.
In the project the materials and process developments will be applied to the core of a unique AEM electric machine design that will be free of rare earth magnets and copper, validated with prototype motor high speed dynamometer testing. This electric machine design is currently being evaluated by leading global automakers and Tier 1's as a more sustainable electrification solution for mass produced passenger cars. Thereafter the core technologies of the project can be applied to other transport, energy and industrial sectors, providing automotive economies of scale.
The partners in the project provide the basis of a 'production ready' UK supply chain with a clear 'end to end' route to market for cost effective materials supply and cold rolling processing, lamination manufacture and rotor/stator sub-assembly, and electric machine production. This project will include production costing and value chain analysis to ensure that this UK supply chain is both market attractive and sustainably profitable.
This project is about the development of a new business model and capability to enable the utilisation of industrial waste gases from the foundation industries, to generate feedstocks and chemicals for use in the production of consumer products in the UK. Such an industrial symbiosis model will displace the import of non-sustainable materials from outside of the UK currently used to supply the consumer goods industry thus building a new UK value chain whilst simultaneously helping to mitigate the waste emissions from the foundation industries (specifically paper, chemicals, and steel). Aside from the technical aspects of the project, additionally, the business model development will frame the economic incentives that will likely be required to make the model work (e.g., carbon taxes on imports of fossil-based materials). The project will uniquely bring together partners from across the whole supply/value chain to achieve this.
In civil and mechanical engineering, the design process is done almost entirely by computer. Similarly, a long-held goal in formulated product (FP) design is to shift from an ad-hoc labour-intensive process towards a more robust and adaptive computer aided formulation (CAF) paradigm. Significant progress has been made over the last two decades in utilizing computational methods to aid in the development of formulated products and materials characterisation and discovery.
The foundation industries in the UK have continued in the face of competition due to their ability to innovate, and add value to the products manufactured in the UK, frequently achieved through the application of a functional coating to address a specific market need. The ability to turn innovations from concept to coating faster, is what will let the foundation industries compete better. The ability to optimize the product and process for cost, quality, energy and material efficiency, without taking more development time is a key enabler for future growth.
This project will take a whole supply chain view on the readiness of digital technologies to augment and enhance the traditional formulation process, and the ability to capture the knowledge of the experts in the process in terms of manufacture of constituents, application process, through a the digital-first process. This consortium, including metals, glass and bulk and speciality chemicals supply chain will seek to demonstrate a digital led approach to preparing a formulation for spray deposition on two different kinds of substrate systems, one for the glass sector, and one for steel. While we will focus on antimicrobial coatings, our approach will derisk similar approaches with many different products, different substrates, different application mechanisms, bringing together national centres of expertise with industry partners. Overall this will enable us to produce high value products at lower cost and with lower energy consumption.
Sodium-ion is emerging as a rival chemistry to the ubiquitous lithium-ion owing to its sustainability, lower cost and increased safety. Today, UK based Faradion and AMTE Power are manufacturing sodium-ion cells in the region of 140Wh/kg opening up 48V mild hybrid and 48V light mobility markets alongside 12V SLI (starting/lighting/ignition) lead acid replacement. This project's vision is to open up sodium-ion to the market of full-EV's by developing a high capacity anode material in excess of 500mAh/g which translates to a cell level energy density exceeding 200Wh/kg. The Centre for Process Innovation will screen processes and materials for techno-economics at TRL2\. Nuria Tapia-Ruiz at the University of Lancaster then identifies promising candidates in half cells at TRL3\. These are then progressed further in single layer pouch cells (TRL4) manufactured at Deregallera. Finally, the best material is tested in double-sided electrode multilayer pouch cells in a size and format guided by the Automotive end-users (TRL5). The National Physical Laboratory supports with their latest operando techniques to lift the fog of empirical analysis during material discovery process development and directly elucidate the electrochemical reaction pathways. In parallel, Deregallera responds to a techno-economic assessment the CPI conducted during round 3, to drive down the cost of their 240mAh/kg (140Wh/kg cell) hard carbon, opening opportunity for a UK based supply chain.
The UK's maritime sector directly contributes £14.5bn GVA to the UK economy a year. However, emissions in UK ports are expected to grow four-fold by 2050 unless solutions are implemented to decarbonise the maritime sector a fact recognised by the Clean Maritime Plan supporting transition to net zero carbon by 2050\.
Shipping is considered one of the most efficient modes of transport but represents a substantial source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (UK-\>13Mt CO2e/year). Air pollution for NOx, SOx and particulates contributes to major public health risk (contributing to asthma symptoms, heart disease and lung cancer) and known to affect biodiversity (DEFRA reporting that 10% of UK NOx and 7% SOx is from shipping).
\>90% of cargo handling vehicles within a port environment are diesel-powered (Euro 3 compliant using grade A2 gas oil) and are responsible for ~36% emissions within a port. Therefore, there is a **need** to develop zero-emission energy storage/electrification solutions which can replace diesel-power for powering cargo handling vehicles in an effort to reduce emissions and air pollution. According to Schneider Electric reducing portside emissions in UK ports could save up to £483m/yr.
Westfield and 2-DTech (collaborating with CPI and the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) are jointly developing new high-performance energy storage system (ESS) technology specifically aimed at enabling the electrification of vehicles/vessels based on the use of novel high-power, high-energy density **supercapacitors.** The supercapacitors overcome the limitations of batteries (Lead-acid/lithium-ion) such as long downtimes for charging, high maintenance and are not environmentally-friendly.
Westfield are developing the control systems and integration of the 2D-Tech supercapacitors within electric vehicles such as Heathrow airport passenger transit POD and have engaged with PSA International (one of the world's largest port operators) and Ports of Antwerp, Milford Haven and Belfast Harbour to develop a new electrified zero-emission energy storage system which can be easily retrofitted into an existing cargo handling vehicle to replace the incumbent diesel-powered engine.
SUPPORTIVE will **further develop the ESS** and **will focus** on:
1.Scaling up our proprietary functionalised graphene material,
2.Demonstrating small batch production of the specialised electrodes and their integration into pouch cells;
3.Reconfiguration of the battery management system,
4.Charging infrastructure required to meet operation of the vehicle which can reduce downtime and number of vehicles required for safe operation.
5.Testing and validating within a cargo handling tow vehicle to validate capability to tow 30t a distance of up to 1mile, 14 times/hr at both Port of Milford Haven and Belfast Harbour.
AIMES is a collaborative feasibility addressing the challenges with development in-mold electronics or IME, for Zero Emission Vehicles and the wider automotive sector.
The project will improve the user experience in ZEVs through creation of smart surfaces, embedding electronics inside 3D surface materials, and enables further opportunities in integrated sensing control and communication electronics.
In this project, the consortium will demonstrate an innovative sodium-nickel-chloride (NaNiCl2) prototype system to TRL6 in representative automotive-sector conditions.
The Consortium is led by LiNa Energy who develop the batteries at the heart of this project.
The other partners are:
* Centre for Process Innovation -- who will research the challenges and opportunities in recycling/re-use LiNa's technology and will support the scale-up.
* Helical Technology Ltd -- will lead design of the end-user specification for the prototype, and contribute to scale-up and compliance with H&S and quality standards required by the automotive industry.
* Imperial College London -- who will use modern analytical techniques on the cells as development progresses
* Lancaster University -- who will contribute advanced engineering simulations to improve cell performance
* MEP Technologies Ltd -- will be responsible for the reconfigurable battery assembly including the BMS, and will support activities around cell and battery thermals.
* University of Warwick -- who will advise on automation and process design.
LiNa's design lends itself to lean, low-cost mass-manufacture, using mature, continuous processes. C-ratings, volumetric and gravimetric energy densities will exceed state-of-the-art LiB platforms. Cost models validated by E4Tech confirm that LiNa's solution will undercut LiB processing costs.
By project-end, the partners will have improved cell performance to meet product targets. Manufacturing will be optimised for scale-up, decarbonisation and recycling. Exploitation and manufacturing strategies will be complete.
The prototype will be constructed and operated to demonstrate TRL6\. Performance will be independently validated by a third-party expert. Potential end users and investors will have the data they advised they require to support the final development phases.
The UK will ban the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2030 and its aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050. The mass introduction of zero emission vehicles is gradual but irreversible. Electric cars overwhelmingly rely on battery technology. Therefore the UK must be at the forefront of design and manufacture of EVs and batteries. Consumer concerns are around cost, charging time, battery life and limited driving range, which severely impedes the sales of EVs. As such the UK is in urgent need of highly innovative solutions that can (i) overcome the aforementioned concerns and (ii) take a technological lead that generates employment and market competitiveness within a short timeframe. It will need better battery design and manufacturing to produce complex technologies at low cost that the market demands.
The Stellar project addresses these challenges by providing innovative and scalable solutions. The project will utilise technology developed by partners for 3D electrode fabrication that has shown significant battery performance improvements. Modelling battery geometries and AI battery design will help address the thermal, energy density and mechanical issues that plague state-of-the-art batteries. This enables vertical integration into the cell manufacturing process through tailoring batteries for specific type of vehicles: fast charging times, increased energy density and power density can then all be engineered before fabrication. CPI will enable fabrication of 3D electrodes designs with optimised ink formulations for commercial applications using state-of-the-art robotic systems for rapid formulation and screening. UKBIC will provide input for ensuring industrial scalability. The process will be able to use AI design to create entire batteries with new electrode geometries and an automated process that allows rapid and cost effective development. The project will demonstrate significant improvement in performance of high-energy lithium-ion battery cells in charging/discharging behaviour and cycle life.
Additionally, the project approach requires no change to existing battery facilities, supply chains and represents a 'drop-in' solution whereby 3D electrodes can be supplied to a variety of facilities. We also remove time-consuming manufacturing processes where several iterations are required for optimum structure and ink creation. We aim to improve cell performance and manufacture, enhancing UK capabilities and creating resilience of supply. We will save time and cost from the present manufacturing chain while benefitting environmentally from longer lifetime cells that will help the UK grid in its transition to cleaner energy mixes.
Gene therapies are a highly promising and rapidly expanding new class of biotherapeutics able to treat and potentially cure diseases that currently have few or no treatment options. The major challenge facing commercialisation of gene therapies is the manufacture and supply of products at a commercial scale.
Critical to the success of gene therapies is the ability to develop robust and scalable manufacturing process that can meet anticipated commercial demand. Platform processes will enable more rapid development and commercialisation of gene therapies at lower risk and cost.
This 12 month project brings together the significant AAV process development expertise and capability of two leading national research organisations, CPI and the National Research Council of Canada, to rapidly optimise a new manufacturing platform for the benefit of companies developing gene therapies (particularly SMEs) and accelerate these important new treatments to market.
Quantum technologies are a core asset in the UK industrial strategy. They will secure the digital world, see where current cameras cannot, and underpin new drugs, thanks to quantum computers solving currently intractable calculations. In collaboration with the Universities and Research Centres, UK high-tech industries are working on translating them from scientific concepts to available technologies, products, and capabilities. To support this challenge, more than £1Billion has been committed in both Government and Industry funding. Photonics is one of the sectors leading the development and deployment of quantum technologies.
Light can carry quantum-secured communications, measure faint signal such as gravitational waves, and solve quantum algorithms. Photonics-based quantum technologies are either required to measure single photons one at a time (single-photon detectors) or to record continuous quantum light signals (proportional detectors) with minimal losses to retain the signatures that make them different from classical light. Here we address this second approach to quantum optical technologies. Today, applications based on such measurement schemes are limited, and detectors are home-built by researchers, often at significant cost in time and monetary. With this project, we join the expertise and capabilities of Bay Photonics (optical packaging and optoelectronics), RedWave Labs (electronics), the experience and resources of the Centre for Process Innovation (photonic applications) and of research teams at the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow (quantum sources, low-noise electronics, quantum metrology) to design, build and test a prototype of a quantum sensor able to address this gap in the market and supply chain. We aim to provide the first commercial solution for measuring quantum states of light composed of thousands to several billion photons. The engagement of the Centre for Process Innovation and the University teams will, on the one hand, contribute to the design of the product, and on the other, serve as an end-user test for the developed technology. The outcome of this endeavour will be a versatile solution for the high sensitivity measurements empowering quantum metrology and some of the most advanced concepts of quantum computing.
In order to meet National and International medicines demand, both small and large pharmaceutical companies need to use multiple suppliers. It takes significant effort to coordinate these separate companies and create an integrated plan that safely ensures patients get the medicines they need. Any changes to the plan take time and effort to manage and this creates waste.
To add to the complexity, in order to sign off a batch of medicines, a Qualified Person ( QP, the person who assures patient safety for a given company) must see all of this data in order legally to release the medicines into the supply chain. The challenge of assembling this data can add delay.
As the requirements of patients change, with an older population along with other constraints such as increasing complexity of medicines, more of the supply chain will migrate towards mixed-company models, putting stress on pricing and the ability of companies to deliver on their promises. The industry can't just 'throw more people at it' forever to solve the problem.
Data science can enable people to streamline the movement of information and look at these problems differently. Once the passage of data has been solved it will even be possible to migrate some of the decisions to electronic systems by using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions. This would allow QPs to focus on important questions. SmartPSC aims to apply these technologies to reduce waste, increase speed and improve access to medicines.
Creating a template by which this can robustly be done will be complex, as it will mean connecting ways of working and systems that have not standardly been connected as well as overcoming data security challenges.
This project aims to create the foundation for delivering this integrated supply chain vision by leveraging expertise and capabilities across a group of small and large companies within the UK pharma supply chain (SC) to deliver two work packages:
1\. Designing and implementing a way to get everyone to share their information in a quickly usable format, so it can move seamlessly and securely between companies so that we can build a real-time multi-company view of the supply chain.
2\. Link data from multiple companies so a QP can quickly and safely make decisions.
By delivering on this scope, we will be able to template future supply chains.
Efficient and agile production of high-quality biopharmaceuticals is of the highest priority to the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry. The advantage of integrating multiple unit operations into a continuous process has been demonstrated by a previous consortium project, based at CPI Darlington. During that project, 3 out 4 of the end-user participant companies have moved to develop their own capabilities. The UK needs to continue to develop expertise in this area to encourage a biopharmaceutical manufacturing presence.
This project builds on the proof-of-concept system developed in previous projects and adds the next required level of configurability, automation control and process intelligence:-
* critical control automation and predictive performance to show real-time continuity of quality attributes and to predict consumable lifetime and changeover to avoid quality deviations (predictive maintenance). Next generation Advanced Process Control and Machine Learning techniques will be developed. These tools will create a vendor independent /scale independent intelligent control solution.
* optimisation of unit operation interfaces by the incorporation of 3D-printed microfluidics to reduce volumes and therefore residence time distribution. These interfaces are also a critical point for hygienic process sampling for at-line quality analytics.
* synchronising the process data generated by the system into manufacturing cost, investment required, environmental cost, production capacity and production facility requirements. These elements will be actively assessed to allow for the process to be optimised on these factors.
* extending the upstream capabilities of the system to include a perfusion bioreactor. The process will utilise a monoclonal antibody product and process from AstraZeneca. Pall Biotech will continue to support the use of equipment and consumables used in the downstream process.
The project brings together 5 biotech product companies, all with UK Operations and a Catapult centre. The output of a demonstrator hosted at a High Value Manufacturing Catapult open access centre will ensure dissemination of the performance, design, control strategies and business value of the integrated manufacturing technology.
The vision for SecQuAL is a secure, quality assured, digitally enabled food ecosystem that will reduce waste, improve decision-making and provide consumers with confidence in the food they purchase and consume. The next best thing since sliced bread!
SecQuAL's key objective is to overhaul the food supply chain from farm to fork. SecQuAL addresses current bottlenecks and inefficient paper practices, enables remote regulatory oversight and compliance, provides quality assurance throughout all supply chain links, and enables smart decisions to be made to reduce food waste, reduce carbon emissions as a result of unnecessary transport, and increase consumer confidence in the food purchased and consumed.
SecQuAL is innovative because it brings technology to the fore to modernise a complete food ecosystem. It will increase the number of digital technology companies providing solutions for manufacturing industries by bringing together an excellent consortium with partners spanning the full food ecosystem introducing digital technologies to modernise current practices.
SecQuAL will simplify a complex industry.
**In some respects, laboratory work has changed little from the lab benches of the 1800s; certainly, the image of laboratories packed with scientists in white coats still holds today. As for many industries, the emergence of COVID-19 has had a major effect on research-intensive industries, and we need to mitigate for this in the future. In 2020, researchers at the University of Liverpool developed a new technology: a mobile robotic chemist that is able to work by itself, 24 hours a day, making decisions about which experiments to do next using artificial intelligence (see BBC News feature, June 2020). Based on this technology, a new spin-out company, Mobotics, was formed. In this project, Mobotics will partner with Johnson Matthey, a UK science and chemicals company, and global leader in sustainability, along with ABB Robotics and the Centre for Process Innovation. By combining their skills in chemistry, robotics, software, and artificial intelligence, this multidisciplinary team will create a resilient solution that will allow companies in the future to operate their research remotely, even in periods of lockdown or social distancing. We will also demonstrate the concept of a "backup lab" -- that is, a mirrored robotic facility in another site that can be controlled securely over the internet. This will allow companies to be more resilient to disruption in the future, not only related to COVID-19 or other diseases, but also in terms of problems with supply chain, infrastructure, or 'spikes' in demand. This programme builds on areas of core UK strength where we hold an international lead and will catapult this new technology into a range of sectors, including pharmaceuticals, home and personal care products, and clean energy (e.g., new battery materials). Societal benefits will include greater flexibility for staff and the ability of researchers to work from home where needed. Longer term, this technology also has the potential to make research more inclusive -- for example, for people with disabilities who might not be able to work within a more conventional laboratory environment.**
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
FASTACEJET focuses on the development of alternative resilient gas-fermentation processes that can exploit un-purified carbon and hydrogen rich industrial waste streams to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by chemo-catalytic routes. FASTACEJET explores sustainable, cost-effective, more energetically favourable and scalable technologies for the production of SAF from waste CO2 compared to the current Lanzatech process. FASTACEJET aims to optimise the technology at lab-scale and validate it to TRL4. A thorough Techno Economic Analysis of the process and fuel testing will enable de-risking the combined bio-chemocatalytic process developed and generate data about its scalability, sustainability and production cost compared to current state-of-the-art.
The SMARTLIGHT project aims to demonstrate the capability of SmartKem's organic thin-film transistors for driving mini-LED backlights for full array local dimming LCD displays. It will generate a range of formats of active-matrix backlights relevant for high brightness displays, and these will be used to show to OEMs that the technology can help them achieve a lower cost solution to high dynamic range (HDR) displays with good reliability. The project partners include SmartKem as lead, Centre for Process Innovation (Catapult), and Folium Optics as a subcontractor. Demonstrators will be used to secure business for SmartKem such as customer funded development projects and ultimately will lead to volume material sales of high value chemicals.
Knowing at an early stage that severe breathlessness and degradation will occur reduces the chances for severe complications and need for hospitalisation. Our proprietary wireless, wearable product predicts shortness of breath episodes and degradation to prevent them from happening by notifying the patient and clinicians to take adequate preventative drugs. Thus, our technology allows clinicians to remotely monitor patients, who can stay at home.
This project aims to fast-track the commercialisation of this innovation to particularly address:
1) the unprecedented number of patients having shortness of breath due to COVID-19, and,
2) assist in the management of emergency surgeries due to cardiorespiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
Hence, it will contribute in lowering the impact of the two biggest challenges coming from dealing with the pandemic: the shortage of clinical equipment and staff, and, the risk of contagion. Our product better rationalises the usage of hospital equipment and reduces unnecessary contact with infected patients.
At the sight of the latest updates (Dec20) regarding the pandemic: the vaccine distribution and the mutation of the virus, the scope of the project will be broadened to strengthen the exploitable outcomes of the project.
Smart wearables are becoming increasingly pervasive, driven by sustained advances in miniaturisation of electronics, improvements in sensors and connectivity, and a growing capability to embed electronics in a variety of products. The next generation of wearable electronics will include smart garments where the electronics are embedded within the textiles themselves and are therefore invisible to the user. These wearables would be used in a variety of different applications, including sports for improved monitoring and performance, medicine for easy to use, continuous health monitoring in the home, and by the military. Through this project, the consortium aims to solve challenges related to the scaled manufacture of such garments to create flexible, durable, and comfortable textiles for future wearable applications.
Leading UK manufacturer of pilot and production roll-to-roll (R2R) tools and machines, Emerson and Renwick (E&R) together with CPI, will apply their extensive expertise in R2R processing and equipment, to evaluate and investigate the challenges associated with pilot and high-volume continuous production for coatings and conversion of advanced materials for the production of battery cell materials for next generations of batteries for the rapidly developing EV industry.
E&R with CPI will carry out a comprehensive feasibility study of future materials and processing of coatings that will be required for next generation batteries technologies, this will including both conventional and vacuum coating techniques and other required processing steps for their eventual end-to-end R2R production.
Analysis of the technologies and supply chain will be carried out as well as aspects of the cost of production.
3D Bio-Tissues Ltd (3DBT) is a Newcastle University spin-out company that is translating recent developments in cell biology and tissue engineering into medical and food-related products. The company has developed a process that produces highly organised collagenous tissue. The similarity in structure between these engineered tissues and their natural counterparts is remarkable and allows for significantly improved function of the resulting tissue. For example 3DBT is currently creating organised collagenous tissues for skin and corneal replacements, but has recently shown that this process is also relevant to cellular meat. A challenge remains in driving down the costs of producing these tissues, especially if intended as food alternatives (cellular meat will necessarily have to be affordable for mass consumers), while eliminating at the same time the use of animal-derived ingredients from the process. Thus, this project explores the development of simple, inexpensive, and readily-available media supplements to feed cells in culture and enable the production of tissues recreating the texture and composition of meat whilst meeting central market demands i.e. low price and absence of serum.
Several research groups and companies in Europe, the US, and elsewhere are developing serum-free media alternatives for enhanced production of cellular meat. However, most of these strategies focus on finding natural and synthetic substitutes for the relevant serum factors. We propose to take a different approach that focuses on the use of novel supplements derived from existing agro-industrial by-products. Use of these in the culture medium will represent a new animal/xenobiotic-free method to increase the efficiency of cellular meat production, a strategy that aims to reduce (or even eliminate) the need for serum supplementation - making the product truly animal-free. Ultimately, the results from this feasibility study used in conjunction with our tissue production methods will deliver a new _in vitro_ system to produce highly-organised, multi-stratified equivalents to bovine, ovine, and porcine meat with a texture and taste that consumers know and love. We therefore expect these innovations to directly address some of the main 'pains' of the cellular meat market, namely by providing natural-looking products with similar characteristics, at a lower production price, and grown without the need of animal slaughter nor use of antibiotics. Ultimately, we expect that a greater adoption of cellular meat by general consumers will eliminate the need for intensive animal farming, thus contributing to lower greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
RNAi therapeutics have the potential to transform healthcare interventions as evidenced by the approval of 2 products in the last 2 years for life threatening diseases. RNAi therapy is designed to transiently reduce a defective gene for therapeutic purposes. It is a rapidly growing market with 109 RNAi based therapeutics in clinical trials (July 2018) \[Wu X. and Turnball A.P. 2018\]. However, there are still issues that surround the RNAi therapeutics which include getting to the appropriate tissue and then ensuring intracellular delivery to the destination site. Recent studies have also indicated that those with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, high-blood pressure or smokers have an increased number of ACE-2 receptors in the lung epithelium \[Leung J.M, 2020\]. Studies have revealed that COVID-19 uses the ACE-2 receptor to enter cells in order to produce more viral particles that can infect more ACE-2 receptor positive cells \[Kuba K. 2005\]. The ACE-2 receptor plays a role for many biological functions but if expression could be lowered for a short period of time it could reduce the infectivity of the virus and help tip the balance towards healthy recovery. RNAi could be used to transiently reduce expression of this ACE-2 receptor but only if there is an appropriate delivery system. pHion (Belfast SME) have developed a solution for RNAi delivery that is safe, does not further exacerbate the immune system, preferentially delivers the therapeutic to the lung and is cost-effective, ultimately enabling widespread adoption of the RNAi therapy. The innovation centres around the use of a peptide termed RALA that is designed to condense RNAi into nanoparticles (NPs) that have the properties necessary to cross cell membranes, escape endosomes delivering the cargo to the cytoplasm with high efficiency. The NPs formed between the RNAi which is designed to reduce ACE-2 expression and the RALA peptide NPs do not require cold chain storage and can be stored for many months without losing functionality. However, we do not as yet have a methodology in place to support the large-scale production of these NPs. Indeed, for the nucleic acid industry, one of the greatest hurdles will be the manufacture of novel therapeutics. Therefore with clear alignment to the specific theme of challenges as a result of COVID-19, this project is designed to accelerate and optimise the scale-up of the RALA/RNAi therapeutic to patient doses in order to be 'future ready'. The proposed 9 month project is designed to develop the optimal conditions for the automated production of functional NPs using microfluidics that can be readily transferred to clinical doses. We will also develop the optimal lyophilisation process to ensure a highly stable functional product. Finally, with regulatory framework in place and proof that we can transfer our process externally to scale up to clinical doses, we will be well positioned to take this therapy to the clinic and to position RALA as the go-to delivery system for RNAi therapeutics to the lung.
This project will look to overcome environmental plastic pollution that is very likely to arise from tree-planting activities, particularly in the forestry industry in the developed world (e.g. US, EU and UK).
It will do this by providing more environmentally compatible products, with better end-of-life options, to the global tree-planting community (e.g. climate change mitigation) & commercial forestry.
The product developed in this project is intended to deliver greater tree-planting productivity, particularly in developing world markets where developed-world best-practice is rarely adopted.
It is the intention of Lead Partner, Chestnut Natural Capital Ltd, to promote best practice to global tree-planting communities, through exploitation activities and future global sales arising from project outputs.
The consortium is developing new materials that are truly biodegradable on land and in the sea. These will be used in the manufacture of new sustainable products that replace existing non-biodegradable plastic products. This project will, therefore, prevent the release of persistent plastics into the natural environment.
The project will create jobs, support UK Government strategy and help to meet UK Government targets for climate change, by; (1) planting trees in the UK and in developing-world markets (e.g. offshoring tree-planting targets), whilst (2) limiting plastics pollution arising from domestic and global tree-planting activities.
Licensing of the technology, and technical services provided by the Lead Partner, Chestnut Natural Capital Ltd, will deliver a platform for rapid scale-out into foreign markets (Africa, South America and Asia), supporting the adoption of better and more sustainable tree-planting practices worldwide with the World Agro-forestry Association (ICRAF).
_It is anticipated that 50% of vehicle production will be wholly or partially electric by 2030\. This project aims to commercialise known quantum technology to address identified challenges in the manufacture of batteries and lithium cells. Quantum technology enables highly sensitive measurements of magnetic fields. This project will use these magnetic measurements to diagnose current flows in lithium cells and the consortium will develop a complete environmentally controlled ageing test production system deployed at the largest commercial powder to power lithium-ion and sodium-ion manufacturing plant in the UK (project lead: AGM). The system will be integrated into AGM's pouch cell assembly and test processes trialled on the range of High, Ultra High power, High Energy and Sodium-ion cells currently being scaled-up and commercialised for UK niche automotive market in particular._
_Having gained global acclaim for best-in-class ICE's, Cosworth are perfect examples of what's best about the UK's high-performance automotive developers. Now they are seeking to build equally successful electric drive trains and only power cells of the very highest quality will suffice. The project is fortunate to have Cosworth as an active partner taking advantage of the Quantum Sensor technology ability to select A-Grade cells for the best hybrid battery performance and good lifetime state-of-health. The technology adds strength to 2nd life use of cells viability due to better SoH confidence through 1st life._
_In the next few years, the UK-BIC (Battery Industrialisation Centre) will be opened. This will be closely followed by AGM's parent company's AMTE GigaFactory which will be capable of manufacturing millions of cells in the UK every year. Like all cell manufacturers, AGM will be burdened with the bottleneck of cell formation and ageing processes. This project aims to significantly reduce this impact and also improve quality yields providing the ability to grade cells effectively. This could prove massively beneficial to the fledgling industry providing a competitive edge enabling AGM to take market share earlier._
MicrofluidX develops and manufactures a system for the production of cell and gene therapies (CGTs). CGTs are an advanced therapy which relies upon complex biological systems (cells, viruses or genetic vector systems) to perform corrective action in patients. This technology has demonstrated an unparalleled healing potential, from multiple types of cancers, to diabetes, and rare diseases. These emerging therapies substantially differ from existing drugs or biologics in that they are a live product with unique development and manufacturing considerations. Existing manufacturing solutions have largely relied on modifying existing biopharma approaches which do not always meet the conditions these therapies require for effective manufacturing. Typically, these therapies are extremely expensive and difficult to produce and average a list price of \>$300k per treatment. These cost constraints, together with the limited production capacity, force public health systems like the NHS to restrict the use to a limited number of patients, and will prevent or delay certain treatments reaching the market if the price points are too high. Key to enabling access to these treatments is therefore to develop a low-cost, robust and scalable manufacturing platform. MicrofluidX is developing a system that cuts costs by up to 90%, enables faster scale-up from discovery to market, and provides more control over manufacturing parameters for a safer end product.
This project seeks to integrate two complementary digital technologies within a continuous manufacturing environment. The fast start project brings together a UK SME (Perceptive Engineering), RTO (CPI, part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult) and large corporate vendor (Pall Biotech) to incorporate a novel "digital wrapper" automation technology with Model Predictive Control & Prescriptive Maintenance system, creating a technology and scale independent intelligent control solution.
As an initial application case study, this project will focus on applying the tools within the high value biopharmaceutical market. This global market is rapidly growing, and when this growth rate is combined with a compelling drive to move towards more intelligent manufacturing it becomes perfectly suited for focusing this game changing programme of work.
Building on a wealth of expertise generated in previous IUK funded projects, the combination of the two digital technologies will greatly enhance the UK manufacturing capability in continuous manufacturing, and the output of a digital demonstrator hosted at a HVMC open access centre will ensure dissemination and rapid deployment across a breadth of sectors not limited to biological manufacturing.
"This project aims to develop 3D printed batteries using Photocentric's novel 3D printing process, in which visible light emitted from liquid crystal (LCD) screens, is being used to selectively cure liquid photopolymer with a sub 10-micron accuracy. A major challenge of the 21st century is electrochemical energy storage, thus the production of more efficient batteries. Despite the progress achieved in this field, especially on the development and reliability of lithium-ion batteries, the main challenge remains to obtain batteries with high energy and power density, lightweight, safe and cost effective.
The main hurdle for achieving improved battery performance is the current fabrication process include multiple, energy and labour-intensive steps, which has little scope for customisation such as changing geometry.
The aim of this feasibility project is to use state-of-the art 3D printing to design and manufacture of battery materials for a variety of battery parts as well as solid state batteries for electric vehicles with accurate control of size, shape and porosity of electrodes to enable high energy density while minimising the overall size and weight.
In collaboration with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Johnson Matthey (JM), we intend to develop 3D printable SSB materials and adapt our 3D printing method for fast and efficient fabrication of batteries. This technology will be tested on small-scale batteries as a proof concept and subsequently scaled up."
When something goes missing at home, like your keys, it's an annoying program. When things get misplaced or lost at work, it's a real problem that costs businesses across the world a lot of money.
In the course of everyday business, a growing new workforce of geographically disperse employees share use of things ranging from tools, demo kits, equipment for portable medical use, IT, or service truck-rolls, to boxes put into storage. When something goes missing, work doesn't get done. Production lines go down. Lives can even be at stake when medical equipment isn't where it's supposed to be.
Reelables, a London-based start-up, has invented a smart label to make tracking things at work completely automatic. It simply peels and sticks like a barcode label. Employees gather information about assets at work with their phones running an app in the background. No scanning required. The unique software provides every employee the ability to know where all their things are at any moment. It also enables them to find things, see what their co-workers have, and when they had it.
Existing asset tracking solutions on the market require a lot of work or are very costly to use and install. They range from simple barcode labels to very expensive GPS-enabled devices. RFID solutions, like barcodes, require manually going about scanning things or installing high power antennas in the ceiling or doorway. The Reelables smart label addresses a mid-range solution which allows for wider market implementation.
The key innovation making this possible is a manufacturing process to form a battery directly alongside a wireless circuit on a thin plastic film. Initial working prototypes of the smart label are made on the same material used for ordinary potato crisp bags. However, the added cost and size of an external battery is the barrier to mass production.
This feasibility study, in conjunction with the Centre for Process Innovation and Digital Catapult aims to demonstrate a game-changing new technology for forming a Battery-on-Circuit. The team intends to show that by electrochemically coating and laminating two plastic films together, an extremely low cost battery can be formed to power a wireless label for more than a year. The team further intends to demonstrate a host of new applications, business efficiencies, and use cases enabled by the innovation that in turn drives economic growth.
Recombinant protein expression is the keystone manufacturing technique supporting production of many biological therapies. A large number of protein expression systems exist, but the majority of biological drugs and protein products that are approved for clinical use have been manufactured using mammalian cell culture techniques. These manufacturing processes are laborious, slow, and expensive.
Yeast systems offer a significantly simpler way of expressing recombinant proteins at scale compared to mammalian cell culture, and at a greatly reduced cost.
A number of yeast protein expression systems have been commercialised. However, the baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) expression systems, which are most commonly used in industry for biologics production, have never themselves been widely commercialised by the companies that developed them. The patent protection for these baker's yeast systems has now expired or is expiring. This engenders considerable freedom to create new systems and develop new IP surrounding enhanced, second-generation protein expression systems utilising S. cerevisiae as their protein-production powerhouse and making this technology widely available to new companies wishing to bring recombinant products to the market.
The project will enable Phenotypeca to develop novel strains of S. cerevisiae to be created that can be quickly and easily tailored to optimize production of recombinant proteins.
In this instance, the platform will be exemplified by producing a protein (H-Guard) for another UK SME - Invizius - which is a coating used on dialysis equipment to prevent inflammatory responses induced by repeated exposure to dialyser membranes.
Invizius will work alongside the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), who join the consortium as grant funded partners to conduct industrial fermentation modelling to identify the most suitable for scale-up production.
The project supports Phenotypeca to become a service provider for clients wanting S. cerevisiae-based protein expression systems. There are currently no commercial providers of industrial S. cerevisiae systems -- all S. cerevisiae systems used industrially are proprietary systems developed in-house by other companies who don't want to share their technology of offer a development service. Phenotypeca is attempting to overcome the unmet market need for S. cerevisiae protein expression systems, especially for a class of therapeutic peptides for which Pichia pastoris-based yeast systems cannot meet the quality and regulatory requirements.
The project objective is enabling the transition from 2D planar LED light-guides to 3D formed materials. In this feasibility study, innovative stretchable conductive materials will be employed with thermoforming processes and surface optics to demonstrate the potential of such 3D functional lighting to the automotive sector.
"The Synergy project is focused on developing a step change in performance and environmental friendliness of lithium ion batteries to meet the needs of electric vehicles. It brings together the raw material, formulation, electrochemical knowledge and cell manufacture capabilities of Synthomer Plc (including Synthomer's polymer development team in Harlow and inorganic material team at William Blythe in Accrington) the Centre for Process Innovation and AGM Batteries Ltd.
The project will lead to manufacturing and performance improvements in the anode system. It will also focus on methods to improve the safety and environmental profile of cathode systems. The combined improvements are expected to reduce the costs of cell manufacture and help to realise the range and power output needed for the next generation of electric vehicles.
The project is well suited to capture and exploit the value of electrode materials and lithium ion cell manufacture by establishing a robust UK supply chain."
"ICE-Batt aims to tackle key challenges on the Automotive Council Electrical Energy Storage Roadmap. For example, optimising existing Li-ion cathode materials; exploring replacements for currently used solvents with more environmentally desirable alternatives; and preparation of cathode chemistries for new chemistries (e.g. Li-S and Li-air)
The approach that will be undertaken is as follows:
* Develop a specification for the requirement of battery
* Development of nanomaterials (Graphene/CNTs or hybrids) and composite materials that can be formulated to develop the electrode
* Formulation and optimisation of the electrode slurry
* Testing the performance of the electrodes from coin-cell testing to, ultimately, single layer pouch cell
The project partners involved, Johnson Matthey (JM), Centre for Process innovation (CPI) and Thomas Swan (TS), bring unique technical skills that, when collaboratively combined, will allow for the accelerated technical development of this project. Outputs from this project will yield, in an optimised battery pack, an EV that will (i) go further, (ii) have a smaller battery, (iii) perform better in low temperatures, (iv) cost less. Further outputs from the project include (i) safeguarding, and generation, of UK jobs, (ii) give UK industry a technical advantage in lithium-ion sector, and (iii) enable access to global markets for UK based SMEs."
"The growth in the electrification of transport, including electric vehicles (EVs), has been driven by lithium-ion batteries. However, to make the next-generation of vehicles cheaper and more efficient, we need to be able to monitor, diagnose and respond to batteries in real-time. This project aims to combine new types of sensors to feed data into a battery management system (BMS) that will be able to react to the changing state of battery health and charge and improve operational safety. This could lead to an increase in battery life of up to 60%.
Crucially, we will look at producing sensors that are robust, sensitive and significantly cheaper than those commercially available. Our goal is that the sensors will be deployed into battery modules at low cost and adopted by industry. Eventually, they may become a requirement for new car certification and help to improve consumer safety, confidence and uptake of EVs.
To verify the feasibility of our approach, our consortium covers a range of commercial and academic expertise that will build sensors into a prototype battery pack."
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Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Awaiting Public Project Summary
"LiNa Energy is founded upon a novel (patent filed Oct 2017) sodium metal chloride planar cell which unlocks the high power/energy density potential of an established sodium battery chemistry whilst giving many additional product advantages such as vastly improved safety (compared to Li-battery), and reduced product complexity. In addition, the unique LiNa chemistry negates the requirement for expensive and difficult to source cobalt.
The main objective of this project is to take the LiNa concept and apply modern material engineering to demonstrate successful operation. Working alongside LiNa are the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Lancaster University. The consortium will use their considerable skill and expertise to design, develop, manufacture and test the first ever LiNa cell. As defined in the LiNa patent, a central theme of the project is to densify a sodium conducting separator on a planar metallic support. All partners are proven world-leaders in this field. This project also addresses manufacturing scale up by applying modern manufacturing methodologies and techniques.
Project success will enable LiNa to demonstrate to already engaged third-parties the enormous potential of LiNa's unique battery. These include a major; electrode material supplier, automated manufacturing equipment supplier, two battery manufacturers and a battery Integrator. All these companies have provided letters of support for LiNa Energy. These companies (and others) will be increasingly targeted as the project progresses as they have expressed considerable interest to see demonstrable results. We will discuss how the technology can be integrated into the next generation of BEV with beneficial impact on vehicle architecture, cost, performance and safety.
Successful achievement of the project milestones will have major economic impacts. These could be realised though the establishment of joint ventures between the partners to exploit IP generated in the project, through to partnerships with current and extended collaborators through future rounds of the Faraday challenge and possibly EU H2020 (and beyond). Protection of IP will be achieved using standard agreements typical within the Faraday Challenge to maximise the swift impact of the research. Both direct and indirect beneficiaries of the project's success could add to the wealth of the nation through the manufacture, sale and servicing of products which contain aspects developed using the results of this project.
The project will complement existing Faraday Challenge projects by adding a strand currently missing from the portfolio and support the UK in a fresh sodium technology ideally suited to automotive applications."
"The rapid development of Gene Therapy Medicinal Products (GTMPs) requires new manufacturing processes and facilities. Gyroscope Therapeutics Ltd and Freeline Therapeutics Ltd are UK-based SMEs developing gene therapies for different indications but which are both delivered via adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors. Gyroscope and Freeline intend to co-develop an innovative, suspension-based viral vector manufacturing process, which will provide a shared platform for the manufacture of each company's GTMP products. The major challenge facing commercialisation of gene therapies is the manufacture and supply of products at a commercial scale. Gyroscope and Freeline will develop a proprietary, serum-free, scalable, suspension based manufacturing platform, which will improve product quality, safety, robustness and reduce the costs of goods at commercial scale. Working together with process development specialists at partner organisations the Centre for Clinical Biotechnology (CBC) and the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), Gyroscope and Freeline will:
1. Establish ways to reduce risk of genetic instability of plasmid starting materials in an integrated approach;
2. Establish a proprietary animal component free and 'chemically defined' suspension cell culture manufacturing process which is scalable and which minimises product heterogeneity while maximising safety, quality and yield;
3. Supply batches of material to confirm comparability of product made using suspension platform material to that produced by current adherent cell culture platforms and so enable process changes to be implemented
4. Generate data to facilitate technology transfer of the developed process at a representative scale to GMP manufacturing facilities for subsequent qualification as a GMP manufacturing process.
Ultimately, a successful outcome will address a significant manufacturing challenge for GTMPs, strengthen the UK position as a leader in scientific innovation, offer scope for investment and employment into UK Pharmaceutical manufacturing and bring healthcare benefits to patients."
"Organic polymers are used in a range of sectors including composites for vehicles and aircraft; performance coatings and packaging and are difficult to synthesise at industrial scale. The manufacturing performance of industrial polymers is typically undertaken in large stirred tank reactors, heated by oil or steam jackets. These are characterised by long reaction times and are associated with slow heating /cooling cycles and lack of consistency between batches. Volume of production is also limited by capital cost of additional units. This project will develop a unique commercial scale microwave heating system for industrial polymer synthesis which can be retro-fitted to existing commercial reactors, delivering a step-change improvement in both reaction time, process control and volume production. We will then demonstrate the technical and commercial benefits of this technology through retro-fitting the design to an existing pilot-scale facility. Existing work at 5 kg scale has shown resins can be manufactured in half the time with improved colour (less burning) and enhanced specification.
Outputs of this project will be the design of a commercial scale system, whose techno-economic performance is validated using a pilot-scale demonstrator. It will enable partner INOX design and Te2v to manufacture, sell and retrofit this technology to key players in the polymer industry and if fully realised would reduce their manufacturing costs by 5.6 bn EUR annually on a market for powder coatings worth 13bn EUR per year whilst at the same time cutting CO2 emissions by 740,000 tonnes per year. A verified supply chain with leveraged support by the Centre for Process Intensification (CPI) with will be used to engage other end users to promote wide adoption of this technology, befitting the UK industrial polymer sector."
"This 30-month collaborative project will develop a Lithium based solid-state battery for plug in hybrid and Electric Vehicles, establish a pre-pilot line for solid-state battery cell technology and develop processes for a new UK based solid-state materials supply chain.
The innovative solid-state technology will enable safer, more energy and power dense cells that will facilitate ultra-fast charging (enable a PHEV or BEV driver to charge their car in 15 to 25 minutes) and put the UK on a path to produce materials for the manufacture of solid-state battery cells and packs and in a world leading position to exploit the technology globally.
Ilika will apply its solid-state battery development processes to formulate an automotive cell capable of achieving Autocouncil 2025 performance targets in energy density and charge rate. Ricardo will apply its Battery Management system to the solid-state cell and develop the capability to super & ultrafast charge the cells (50 to 350kW charging) demonstrable in a prototype battery module.
Ilika will build upon its success of manufacturing micro solid-state batteries and will develop a pre-pilot line to enable prototype cells to be manufactured reliably and consistently to support vehicle development programmes and other solid-sate research undertaken within other research institutions.
Using their expertise in Ink formulation and hydro-thermal synthesis, CPI and UCL will develop a UK based production capability that is scalable to hundreds of tonnes per year for the production of solid state electrolyte (SSE) powders, required for making SSB's.
This project is supported by Honda who will provide essential exploitation guidance and also will conduct functionality testing at their facilities."
Though the monoclonal antibody (mAb), infliximab, is considered a gold-standard treatment for the 300,000 patients in the UK with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the compound can only be administered through an inconvenient and often painful injection. In doing so, only less than 1% of the drug reaches the site of disease, limiting the efficacy of the treatment whilst causing a wide range of serious side-effects. Intract Pharma's novel drug delivery technology, Soteria, allows for infliximab to be administered orally, creating a more targeted IBD treatment. In partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), Quay Pharmaceuticals and Pharmidex, Intract Pharma will develop, optimise and validate a manufacturing process that enables mAbs to be formulated as an oral solid dosage form, and in turn create a GMP-ready manufacturing protocol for Soteria. So far, mAb therapies have not yet been able to be manufactured for oral administration in both a clinically and commercially viable manner. Therefore, the project will develop new innovative manufacturing approaches in the field of pharmaceutical formulation, particularly with regards to antibody stabilisation and formulation. As a result, this project will not only break new ground in antibody formulation but further develop a therapeutic that could vastly improve the treatment of patients with IBD.
"Increased safety and performance of electric vehicles is paramount to wider adoption by the public and the UK as a whole; it is also essential to achieving the goals set out in the automotive technology roadmap . A key way to improve safety and performance is to increase the amount of sensor information from the batteries, particularly temperature. PST Sensors offers this unique ability to print temperature sensors that can be developed into arrays that are conformable to a battery cell. Current methods of measuring battery temperature only allow for single point measurements mainly on the charging circuity, which does not provide the whole picture of the cells integrity.
PST collaborating with CPI, will work together they to test the up-scaling potential of PST temperature sensors for use in battery monitoring systems. If each cell has its sensor array then the need to produce on scale is paramount, hence the need to use a cheap process like screen printing. Using such a sensors will dramatically reduce the chances of thermal runaway and allow for improved monitoring of the batteries. By improving the amount of information obtained from the batteries, PST envisage a longer life and increased range without altering the current design of EV. This will reduce the environmental impact of the EVs and their batteries further and bring their range on par with combustion engines."
The UK Niche Vehicle Battery Cell Supply Chain project brings together niche vehicle manufacturers and Tier1 developers and suppliers with the UKs only Li-ion cell manufacturer, a UK materials manufacturer, an automotive supply chain specialist and three prominent Research and Technology Organisations. It addresses a problem that affects many developers and manufacturers of specialist products that rely on batteries. Although Li-ion technology was invented in the UK, it was the Japanese technology giant Sony that commercialised and brought the first Li-ion products to market. The UK is very strong on battery technology research. This project aims to bridge the gap between research and product and to bring battery cell manufacture to the UK. We're doing this in a very focused way, where we can support one of the UKs strong existing manufacturing sectors, niche vehicles, helping it to thrive in the new world of vehicle electrification. The volume of cells required by this industry are manageable by global production standards and play to the UKs strengths of high performance, quality and customisation. This is the first step to creating a significant UK industry.
The UK’s pharmaceutical sector is the sixth largest contributor to UK’s net export, contributing approximately £32.4 p.a. [3]. However, the sector's output dropped by an average of approximately 3.2% per year between 2008 and 2013 [4]. This decline has been partly attributed to reduced R&D investment and the lack of government investment in radical and disruptive manufacturing innovations. Despite the UK’s strong global position (3rd) in pharma R&D [11], it currently ranks 8th in pharma manufacturing, trailing the US, Japan, China, Germany, France, Brazil, and Italy [12]. The UK’s weakness in manufacturing innovation has led to it losing out to competing countries on the final manufacture of high value innovative pharma/fine chemical products, leading to increased UK imports of materials and finished products, reduced self-sufficiency, increased vulnerability to supply shortages, loss of high value jobs, and loss of manufacturing knowhow and skills [8]. As a measure to avert the above decline and to boost the competitiveness of the UK’s pharmaceutical sector, the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and University of Strathclyde are partnering with UK industry stakeholders and UK Government to create a state-of-the-art Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC), dedicated to accelerating the development and industrial adoption of transformative manufacturing innovations in small molecule pharmaceuticals (which make up the majority of medicines) and fine chemicals (of which >70% are consumed by the pharmaceutical industry).
There is a need to develop better processes for manufacturing conducting textiles. Textiles have properties which give them many advantages for clothing, medical devices, shelters but if we want to make them "smart" by connecting them to the internet or a satellite, powering them up or hiding them to certain frequencies, current approaches compromise these properties. There is a proprietary process for making thin, controllable and highly durable conducting layers or tracks on a wide range of textiles. The coating retains the feel and mechanical properties of the original textile (unlike, say, textiles made by incorporating wires), it works on a wide range of surfaces and it is resistant to washing (unlike printed coatings). This project will optimise the process to give the ability to make consistent highly conductive textiles at medium volume (tens of m2 per day) at a price which makes them applicable to a wide range of uses.
"The PROGRES project builds on previous Innovate UK projects and will address super light-weighting challenges for weight sensitive UAVs (and other) powertrain applications. It will aim to industrialise and upscale production graphene enabled, highly conductive and corrosion resistant polymer coatings with the potential to achieve cost savings of up to 90%.
Light-weighted stacks enable UAVs to fly higher and longer with enhanced, system operational capabilities over the incumbent battery technology. Coated plates make up ~80% of the weight of a fuel cell, but mass reduction requires innovation of the plate stack materials/coatings. Similarly, light-weighting is key in accessing automotive and portable markets. As generally accepted aerospace materials, PROGRES also aims to validate production scale processes for Ti and Al foils.
Ti represents a (first) step change in light-weighting of fuel cell stacks, but requires new supply-chains and complementary upstream/downstream production and QC processes; and the potential to scale to high-volume/low-cost production. The technical feasibility of using total-barrier protection (highly) conductive coatings will also be assessed for Aluminium to harness its superior weight/performance potential. Total-barrier properties will be key to ensuring that performance does not degrade due to the ingress of very low pH (<1) electrolytes at the surface. Extended operational life will be benchmarked, with minimal degradation and acceptable running times \>800hrs. A successful project outcome will establish a UK based competency within a global UAV marketplace."
Gene therapy is an exciting new wave of medicine whereby therapeutic DNA is delivered into patients' cells to correct genetic disorders, use the body's own cells to make therapeutic proteins, or empower one's immune system to better fight cancer. Development of these advanced therapies is however still at a relatively early stage and current manufacturing processes remain prohibitively expensive. This expense is due in part to inefficient production and purification of the viral vectors that are primarily used to deliver genetic packages into patients' cells. The transformative promise of these therapies will not be realised if they cannot be mass manufactured to produce a therapy that is affordable to healthcare providers such as the NHS. Puridify has been working with several clinical stage companies over the last 3 years to develop a breakthrough purification technology based on nanofibres. This project will allow Puridify to demonstrate the ability to tailor this purification platform for gene therapy developers; providing the lower cost, more efficient and scalable manufacturing processes required to deliver affordable gene therapies to patients.
"The mitigation of food waste in the supply chain, from producers to retailers to consumers, is a key need today because of its many socio-economic and environmental impacts. Surveys show that consumers are often confused by Use-by/Sell-by dates.
Intray has developed the underpinning proof-of-principal for an innovative Time Temperature Indicator (TTI) label (Oli-Tec) for food and medical applications. Oli-Tec labels use innovative patented technology to respond to both time and temperature changes and inform the consumers of the changes via an easy-to-understand Green-Amber-Red signalling mechanism.
The proof of concept for the Oli-Tec labels has been established using innovative patented wet media formulations and label design. With the help of InnovateUK funding, Intray will address various technical and production risks related to commercialisation of this UK innovation and patented technology. For the industrial partners, participating in this project with CPI, leverages access to over £90m of UK government's investment in relevant equipment & expertise at CPI's National Formulation Centre. The development of Demonstrator labels with specific timings will allow Intray to sample to alpha-customers for evaluation and market trials.
The project will allow Intray to leverage relevant UK skills/expertise and lower the developmental risks in taking this innovation to higher TRL levels. At the end of the project, Intray will be able to the leverage its innovation and commercialize the Oli-Tec label with its commercialisation partner, OLPL, bringing significant royalty fees from licensing opportunities in the UK/EU and US and also via manufacture and sale of optimised media formulations for various timing labels. Thus, the funding will have a net positive impact on the UK economy, bringing in not only royalty income back from global licenscing opportunities but also driving UK employment in wet media development and manufacture."
"The adoption of high energy density batteries is necessary to extend the range of electric vehicles, reduce range anxiety, and increase consumer acceptance. Batteries using lithium-metal as the anode material have significantly higher energy densities than conventional Li-ion batteries; a two fold increase in gravimetric energy can be achieved using lithium metal as opposed to graphite anodes. However, they suffer from short cycle lives due to the high reactivity of lithium. Current state-of-the-art lithium-sulfur and lithium-ion cells with lithium-metal anodes have cycle lives of approximately 100 cycles. To address this problem, OXIS have developed protective coatings on lithium metal foil at the lab scale, which lead to extended cycle life of lithium-sulfur cells. A high-throughput lithium-coating process is necessary to improve the cycle life of lithium-metal batteries at the volumes required for the automotive market.
The Lithium Innovations for Future Electric vehicles (LIFE) project will assess the feasibility of scaling up these coatings on lithium metal foil. Led by OXIS Energy, leaders in the development of next-generation lithium-sulfur batteries, and joined by the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), experts in coating technologies, this study will investigate four key areas in the scale-up of lithium-metal coatings: the materials properties of lithium foils received from suppliers; pre-processing lithium foils prior to coating; depositing protective coatings onto lithium foil; and post-processing and integration of coated lithium into lithium-sulfur cells. Multiple pre-processing, coating, and post-processing techniques will be explored to assess the feasibility of integrating each into a single pilot line. And at each stage of this project, the focus will be on identifying potential challenges with the scaling of lithium-metal protection in order to mitigate the risks involved in building a high-volume coating line.
A scalable process for coating lithium foil is essential for manufacturing next-generation lithium-metal batteries for electric vehicles. Upon completion of this study, a detailed customer requirement document for a high-throughput pilot line for coating lithium foil will be produced. This can then be taken to manufacturers of high-volume processing equipment for the construction of a lithium foil coating line, which will allow for the rapid scale-up of protected lithium anodes, with the goal of having a pilot line installed and commissioned after completion of this project."
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Despite the UN's declared Human Right to Water Policy, almost 30% of the world's population does not have access to safe drinking water. Membrane-based water purification systems are a critical technology solution to address the global challenges of poor water quality, pollution of aquatic surface water sources, and water scarcity. Overcoming the inherent limitations of conventional membrane materials to purify contaminated water at low cost while retaining high water flux is necessary to provide the next generation of point-of-use water purification systems. G2O has developed a graphene oxide based coating technology that has shown excellent separation of organic contaminants along with increased water flux through the membranes. The combination of high throughput and low pressure makes the technology suitable for point-of-use water purification systems. The project aims to develop an industrially scalable process for manufacturing of these membranes via development of a robust formulation for printing the GO-based coating onto the membrane substrate. Development of prototype modules using these membranes will allow the consortium to validate its performance and benchmark it against incumbent systems during the project.
Toxic medicines are becoming a major focus of the pharmaceutical industry, as high potency products need minimal amounts to dose patients and so material requirements are low. However, the associated risks of working with these toxic products can make their development problematic, and traditional manufacturing routes are often unsuitable. This project will examine using cell free expression to produce a botulinum toxin from a "doggybone DNA" (dbDNA) vector. The project will develop a closed loop system for producing dbDNA, and screen a wide range of conditions to optimise a cell free expression system, for enclosed processing of toxins to negate the health and safety risks and technical yield limitations associated with high potency biopharmaceutical production. The project is a collaboration led by Ipsen Biopharm, involving Touchlight Genetics and the Centre for Process Innovation.
"Cancer is the second leading cause of global mortality with over 8,000,000 deaths worldwide (WHO, 2015) and 163,444 in the UK (CRUK, 2014). There continues to be large unmet clinical need for patients with certain cancers such as ovarian where median survival is only 3 years. These survival rates have not changed for the past 3 decades. BioMoti, in a new alliance with Pharmidex and the CPI, is developing the Oncojan(tm) platform to overcome current limitations. Oncojans(tm) are a new class of precision sustained therapeutics that are loaded in biodegradable microparticles and target CD95L on tumours. CD95L is overexpressed on cells of the tumour bulk and vasculature (but not on healthy tissue) where it promotes proliferation, metastasis and immune evasion. BMT101 is the Oncojan(tm) based lead candidate that is the chemotherapy loaded into biodegradable microparticles surface modified with CD95R to target CD95L. This proposal aims to build on exciting pilot data showing that BMT101 results in remarkable preclinical activity; 65-fold reduction in tumour burden, doubling of median survival and loss of toxicity compared to the Taxol(r) standard-of-care chemotherapy in ovarian cancer.
One major barrier to progressing the technology to a successful commercial outcome is the ability to controllably manufacture microparticles with desirable attributes at a meaningful scale. This includes reliably producing microparticles with high paclitaxel loadings at a specific and monodisperse size. For this project, we will study the feasibility of developing a scalable protocol for the reproducible manufacture of BMT101 formulation with desirable attributes using microfluidics technology. We will verify that produced formulations maintain high efficacy in vitro and in vivo as seen in early pilot studies. The aim is to provide a clear route for the future manufacture of regulatory compliant material for clinical trials. Positive project outcomes will enable commercial investment to support future formal development of BMT101 for the benefit of patients in the highly unmet ovarian cancer indication. It is likely the same formulation could be used in further poorly treated indications such as triple negative breast or oesophageal cancer."
"Many modern medicines are no longer produced in chemistry labs, but instead in big bio-reactors where cells produce the medicines (aka biotherapeutics). This is similar to what happens when beer is brewed or yoghurt is made. Like any living organism, different strains of cells vary subtly with some much more effective at making high quality medicines than others. Thus it is important to select the best cell line for the medicine you are trying to produce. In addition, when growing cells it is important to regularly check that they are healthy and have the right levels of nutrients to ensure that a high quality medicine is produced at highest possible yield.
An excellent parameter to monitor the health of these cell cultures is a diverse group of chemicals known as metabolites. These include nutrients (vitamins, sugars, amino acids, fats), but also metabolic by-products (like lactate) or toxins.
Currently, whilst they are promising treatments, biotherapeutics are expensive to manufacture, thus are a big drain on a country's medicines budget.
The close and repeated monitoring of multiple metabolites in cell culture processes could significantly improve the efficiency and cost of manufacturing biotherapeutics and avoid costly culture failures, enabling better medicines to be produced more cheaply, ultimately benefitting patients.
Despite the noted advantages of metabolite monitoring, only a few are measured at present and at infrequent points in the process. This is because current measurement instruments are very expensive to purchase, each test is expensive, the machines are difficult to operate and slow in giving results.
Our solution is to develop a breakthrough metabolite analyser that overcomes the above drawbacks. Our analyser will be able to quickly measure many different metabolites in one sample. Importantly it will be easy to use and much cheaper to purchase and run. This will make it usable at many stages of medicines manufacture, ultimately leading to new medicines reaching more patients."
The DIRECT project aims to bring together CPIs Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) capabilities and Eight19's Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) platform to deliver an integrated process for barrier protection of OPV devices. The project is a 12 month feasibility study to establish the ground rules for roll to roll ALD barriers for solution processed OPV materials and resultant encapsulated photovoltaic modules. The project will initially be focussed on small area devices for testing ALD deposition on OPV materials, with a scale-up effort towards the end of the project. Test devices will be evaluated by for instance damp-heat testing to establish whether the ALD barrier has formed correctly. In addition a small wireless demonstrator will be produced to highlight the potential benefits of the technology pairing.
Project UltraWELD will develop photonic based processes for highly dissimilar material joining in manufacturing of complex electro optics devices for defence/aerospace applications and OLED lighting. Ultrafast (i.e. pico- or femto-second pulsed) laser welding of glass to metals is proposed as an alternative to other bonding techniques that currently fail to provide a satisfactory solution on demanding requirements for device hermetic sealing and suffer from device degradation due to outgassing of volatile components in adhesives. We will develop new ultrafast laser processes for dissimilar material joining (microwelding) and also design and build a flexible custom laser prototype machine capable of applications development to demonstrate such laser microwelding in key selected real devices at TRL level 6. The project will directly benefit all five industry partners by enabling early adoption of this technology from end users, to enhance product competitiveness by increasing reliability and in-service lifetime and reduce cost of ownership.
Generally, metal packaging is protected with an organic coating on the internal side of the substrate to safeguard against contamination of the product by the metal and degradation of the metal by the product. Additionally, the external surface is often printed for decorative purposes. Epoxy based coatings are the most important protective technology used for metal packaging. They are used due to their outstanding chemical resistance to a wide range of food products and chemicals and possess excellent adhesion to all kinds of substrates. This project will seek to formulate a new set of thin film coatings with improved barrier properties, lowering manufacturing costs and increasing productivity.
While biotherapeutics offer potential treatments for some of the most debilitating diseases the development and manufacture of these potentially life changing treatments is risky, technically challenging and expensive. This program will combine GlycoSeLect UK Ltd's glycosylation recognition technology with ForteBio Pall Life Science's unique BLI biosensor based analytical platform technology. This will create a novel analytical platform that will enable rapid and high-throughput analysis of biotherapeutic product glycosylation, a critical product quality attribute that impacts on the efficacy and safety of these therapeutic molecules. This new glycoanalytical platform can be deployed throughout the biotherapeutic development pipeline, and in manufacturing processes, to increase the efficiency and deliver significant cost savings. By working in partnership with Allergan Biologics Ltd, a leading biotherapeutic developer and manufacture, and the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) this project will demonstrate the value of this new glycoanalytical platform for the rapid glycoanalysis of biotherapeutic products to support the development and manufacture of these important therapeutic products.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Biotherapeutic drugs are an increasingly important class of new medicines and their effective action in the
therapeutic treatment of disease has attracted interest from both academic and industry sectors. Despite the
overwhelming benefits to patients, the availability of these drugs at point-of-care is inextricably linked to their
affordability. Currently, the costs associated with the development and production of safe and effective
biotherapeutic drugs are extremely high, and such costs must ultimately be passed on in the final drug product.
One of the major risk areas in drug development is the occurrence of bundles of drug molecules known as
aggregates, which can result in unwanted side-effects in patients or in a reduction of therapeutic effectiveness.
This project brings together biopharmaceutical companies, academic research leaders and developers of
scientific instruments in order to produce novel sensors that can improve the detection of drug aggregates
throughout the drug development process. With this novel analytical technology, we aim to attenuate the risks
associated with aggregation to ensure the delivery of safe and cost-effective drugs in the future.
The purpose of the project is to develop an autonomous & integrated sensor system for Tyre Pressure and Management System (TPMS). Development includes; a) printed kinetic harvesting element (based on piezoelectric materials), b) power management and sensing devices that enable real-time monitoring of individual tyre performance within a truck to reduce fuel costs and enhance truck safety. The novel active harvesting elements will be co-developed by Bath University and CPI (the HVM Manufacturing Catapult). This early stage prototype consists of an EH/S element alongside a pressure sensing MCU and RfID circuit capable of relaying data remotely without connection to the tyre. The practical work includes fabrication and testing to understand the power that can be harvested, the operating temperature window and the lifetime of the EH/S transducer. The project is looking to develop a system for the lead company to exploit in the fleet operator market and a leading tyre manufacturer long term.
The project will develop and commercialisation of a series of printable sensor platforms capable of sensing the
biggest hazards to urban health in China and the UK providing societal benefits to both the countries long term.
It builds upon previous academic work which was funded in the UK and will be further developed by a member
of the HVM Catapult. The up-scaled sensors will target industrial solvents, NOx, CO and PM2.5 particles and
seek to develop a sensor inlay capable of being integrated with conventional electronics. The basis of the 3
sensors will utilise a novel particle sensing electrode, an OFET gas sensor and a graphene/metal oxide sensor.
The printable electronic components will be developed in the UK using high-value materials and large area
fabrication techniques and then licenced for production in China. The majority of the work in the project will
focus on the optimisation of the design, the functional inks and design of the platform for first application
implementation. This will be progressed to a short trial within China of the sensor platform. The output of the
project will be a versatile platform which can be exploited in multiple markets.
This collaborative early stage project focuses on investigating the potential of developing higher efficiency
stable perovskite solar cells (PSC) by the improvement of the meso-porous Titania cathode substrate structures
by surface treatment processing. Various methods will be utilised to realise the surface treatments and fully
processed PSCs will be fabricated and tested to verify the performance and stability benefits. This collaborative
R&D project will focus on improving the efficiency, stability and processing of the PSC technology, in order to
move towards developing viable and manufacturable thin film PSCs suitable for implementation in the Building
Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) market. Building on existing perovskite PV material stack technologies; new
process methods and the incorporation of improved electronic layers will be explored, developed and tested.
The benefits will also include lower cost (<$0.2/ Wh) and an expected improved stability and scalable
processing routes for manufacturing. It will secure a UK R&D capability with the key supplier of technology and
materials for perovskite solar cells with the support of the HVM Catapult and its facilities.
Traditionally, the storage and transportation of natural gas requires either 1) high-compression at 250 bar (CNG), or 2) liquefaction at -162 °C (LNG). Both these methods are energy-intensive and costly. A third much cheaper option uses a porous material to enable gas to be adsorbed at the molecular level at lower pressures. Immaterial designs and manufactures porous metal organic frameworks (MOFs). Our MOFs enable the efficient storage of gas without the need for high compression or liquefaction. In doing so, we are able to drive enormous savings in the transportation and storage of natural gas. Innovate UK funding will enable this project to assess the technical feasibility of an industrial-scale process for the synthesis of high-value MOF materials.
The production of rapeseed oil generates low value streams rich in natural compounds that can be used as starting materials to produce high value compounds for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmetics industries. This project will utilise a food grade yeast to convert the compounds in these waste streams to high value products that can be used as nutritional supplements, and as active pharmaceutical ingredients for the synthesis of a wide variety of drugs that are critical for human health. If successful, it will provide a more sustainable route for the manufacturing of these products, add value to the UK’s rapeseed oil industry and launch new start-up companies in high value manufacturing.
NANOMEDICINE (NanoMed) is a new era in medicine that exploits nano-engineering to deliver the right dose of therapy to the right place, at the right time. LIF is a growth factor important for maintaining brain health and the SME "LNT" has pioneered NanoMed for delivery of LIF as a revolutionary approach to treat the devastating autoimmune disease MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS). Incurable, MS attacks the brain, starting in young adulthood and costing the global economy some $100bn pa. AIMS: having proven LIFNano (LN001) is far superior to the best alternative therapy for MS, this project will now deliver LN001 to patients on two fronts: (i) by establishing the first UK-based commercial resource for NanoMed; and (ii) by securing LN001 in a clinical formula. Three levels of synergy operate: UK manufacture, UK intellectual property with worldwide exclusive licence to LNT, and UK-based global leader in new therapeutic approaches to MS. The gain to the UK economy will be high and the added value of I-UK support to LNT will exceed 100-fold on licencing as Big Pharma become engaged especially since LN001 is applicable to a wide range of degenerative conditions. Further added value is in the increased specialist portfolio of UK's High Value Manufacturing Catapult (CPI).
As biopharma moves to the business mainstream, the industry will increasingly need to find new ways
to maintain competitiveness by ensuring affordability, quality, and delivery performance. Continuous
processes have been proposed as a solution as they are scalable, offer higher productivity with reduced
running times and materials usage, and require smaller footprint and less capital intense facilities. The
project brings together five leading biopharmaceutical companies with UK Operations, process
technology suppliers and a Catapult centre to develop an automated continuous biologics purification
unit for more efficient manufacture of a wide range of biologic drugs. The new unit will consist of
integrated, multiple operations running concurrently.
Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is an analytical technique routinely used in the biopharmaceutical industry to study the effects of manufacturing, formulation, and storage conditions on protein conformation and stability. The difficulty in data interpretation of CD is limited to demonstrating conformational comparability after a manufacturing/formulation change using qualitative assessments of overlaid spectra, which is fundamentally subjective and prone to error. This project will standardise data collection and analysis and build model based approaches for quantitative analysis of Higher Order Structure using CD. The data collected will allow for the generation of platform models and data sets to widen the application of CD into bioprocess development.
State-of-the-art PEM fuel cells utilise metallic separator plates which require a coating to reduce their contact resistance to acceptable levels. Such coatings are usually applied by PVD which has high capital costs in order to achieve high volume. This feasibility project aims to reduce PEM bipolar plate coating costs by developing high conductivity carbon-based coatings suitable for application by traditional high volume wet coating processes. Methods for depositing thin film coatings onto preformed, roll material for subsequent forming into fuel cell plates will be developed, these will then undergo ex-situ characterisation for adhesion of the coating through the forming operation and contact resistance before in-situ fuel cell testing. In parallel, coating options for formed parts will be devised such that a comparative costing of pre- vs post-forming coating options can be carried out. The project will aim to develop a process which represents a 30% reduction over the volume cost of existing PVD processed materials whilst achieving equivalent to, or better than, incumbent contact resistance, and demonstrating a route to volume realisation.
Membrane filters can be applied for a variety of industrial liquid and gas separations applications such as water
desalination, water/oil separation during oil drilling and industrial waste water treatment. A major operational
issue with filter membranes is their tendency to foul with use over time, which results in lowering throughput,
increasing energy consumption and the need for costly maintenance. The aim of this project is to develop a low
cost self-cleaning coating technology based on functionalised graphene, which once applied to industrial
membranes makes them resistant to fouling. The technology has already been demonstrated successfully in
lab-scale tests. Led by G2O Water Limited, this project will translate the lab-scale work into a working robust,
reliable manufacturing process which can be scaled-up to enhance the performance of existing filter
membranes. The coating will be formulated and validated by the consortium for deployment in a number of
different applications, in order to ensure the resulting smart product can be taken to market and be readily
applied to improve the performance of a broad range of industrial processes.
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Knowledge of a biopharmaceutical product’s higher order structure (HOS) and conformational dynamics, and
how these relate to it’s mode of action and/or degradation, are central to enable effective and streamlined
biopharmaceutical development through QbD-based approaches. Hydrogen deuterium exchange mass
spectrometry (HDX MS) is a technique increasingly used to characterise the HOS of peptide and protein
therapeutics. HDX MS can determine structural perturbations in a protein that elicit changes in conformational
dynamics or solvent accessibility. Commercial implementation of automated HDX MS analysis, has greatly
increased the utility of HDX MS in the biopharmaceutical industry for HOS analysis. But there are limitations
with these systems where unstructured or highly dynamic, solvent exposed protein regions are not able to be
differentiated or analysed. This team propose to develop a system that will allow routine analyse of these
proteins and peptides with HDX MS.
Gene therapy is becoming an increasingly important method of treatment for a variety of major unmet medical
needs especially in the areas of inherited and rare diseases and diseases of the eye, conditions which are life
threatening or significantly diminish quality of life. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors are currently the
delivery vehicle of choice for gene therapy treatments but the advancement of these treatments into clinical
trials is currently hampered by the lack of scalabilty needed to manufacture these vectors.
The proposed collaboration between Cobra and CPI will develop the scientific understanding to allow scalable
flexibile process to be developed to manufacture AAV vectors. This will enable the acceleration of more
potential products into clinical testing and ultimately new medicinces. This in turn will increase the chances of
treatment being developed for a whole range of these currently intractable diseases.
The project, ALGIPRO, is an innovative collaborative effort between Norway and the UK. It will translate over 20 years of academic research into an industrial scale production process for alginates. The Centre for Process Innovation Ltd. (UK) is leading the scale-up based on development by SINTEF (Norway). AlgiPharma AS (Norway) will use the product as the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient in its development of medicines for cystic fibrosis, COPD and chronic wounds. FMC Biopolymer (UK, Norway) will market the product in existing and new applications within the food and pharmaceutical markets.
If successful ALGIPRO will facilitate the introduction of novel medicinal products to the market that will ease patient suffering and potentially reduce healthcare costs. In addition it will be a new tool in fighting multi-drug resistant bacteria.
The Little Owl is an industry led project to research into a novel method of 'clean' efficient propulsion for an unmanned air system with associated technologies to facilitate extended time-on-station and long endurance.
Many of the chemicals used to manufacture plastics, fuels and commodities are produced from
microorganisms grown on various feedstocks in fermenters. This project will progress innovative
patented technology which suspends unnecessary cell metabolism and growth while still enabling
enhanced production of chemical products, a state known as quiescence. The advantages of quiescent
cell technology (Q-Cells) are enabled for bioreactors operating under optimal production conditions
with concomitant improved productivity, efficient and cost effective use of the feedstock and reduced
waste generation. The mechanism to improve control of quiescence will be investigated within the
constraints of industrial fermentation conditions under scale-down. This study will assess the generic
applicability of the technology to improve competitiveness of Industial Biotechnology to produce bulk
chemicals.
A collaborative R&D project to design, build & trial a modular unit for the continuous production of a range of market leading surfactants, currently manufactured in the UK by Croda Europe Ltd. Based on patented Continuous Oscillating Baffle Reactor technology, the project will deliver a new process for the manufacture of existing products, with significant improvements in operational & capital costs & process sustainability without impacting product quality. Processes are specifically designed for integration with existing batch manufacturing assets to provide increased capacity without the need for new supporting infrastructure & extended footprint. The consortium believes that the 30% targeted reduction in operational costs, combined with reduced capital requirements will make investment in UK manufacturing a competitive option in a global market. This industry led, four partner consortium (Croda, CPI, UoC IfM & NiTech) will establish technical & commercial viability of the concept; de-risking future commercial investment in the proposed technology. The impact of this strategy to create flexible manufacturing capacity on existing business models will be explored.
Raman spectrometers are a common laser based chemical analysing tool used today across both industry and academia. The aim of this project is provide quantifiable and verified data from a new prototype spectrometer, that will bring significant benefit to the process industry. The benefits included improved quality control of manufacturing processes that can lead to a siginicant reduction in costs of around 10% by reducing energy costs, CO2 and waste. This project is focused on proving the case for a range of industries including bio-energy, graphene, industrial biotechnology, pigments and poymer production. The study team have a focus in Wilton with key collaberators being the Centre for Process Innovation and Intertek located in the Wilton Centre. As part of the launchpad they will avail themselves of the opportunity to network and build relationships with other companies located in the centre. During the programme potential customers in the target process industries will be consulted to ensure the development targets their requirements.
Development of biotherapeutics is risky and expensive with current timelines from bench to bedside being estimated at 7-10 years at a cost of $2.8bn. This project exploits Glythera’s technology which can stabilise glycosylation profiles to increase bioavailability and the therapeutic window to enhance the efficacy of the drug but also patient care through the reduction in dosing cycles. GlycoSelect will develop a highly specific lectin to Glythera’s technology as a supporting and orthogonal approach to analytical development and characterisation. Since this rapid methodology can be deployed during any point in the discovery through to the clinical development programme this would support and significant de-risk drug development efforts. Both companies will demonstrate the value of their combined technologies through the further development of improved drug classes and comparison to known analytical methods underpinning their importance in drug development.
This project will develop a process which uses seaweed for the generation of sustainable energy by anaerobic digestion (AD). Currently, farmers, food processors and industry use AD to generate bio-methane from wastes, to reduce energy costs or provide income. As waste supplies can be variable and AD is a continuous process, food crops like maize and beets are used to supplement waste. Seaweed has the potential to replace these food crops, which use land and water which could otherwise be used for human food production. The UK has extensive coastal waters and internationally recognised academic excellence in seaweed, its growth requirements and environmental considerations. This project brings together expertise in AD process development, economic modelling, environmental and social impact assessment and the supply chain - from seabed access for seaweed farming through to biogas injection into the national grid.
This project aims to produce modified strains of the microorganism Geobacillus to produce pure D-lactic acid for renewable products such as bioplastics using agricultural by-products and municipal waste. The bacterial host grows at high temperatures and has the ability to convert all the sugars in non-food materials, resulting in a process to produce D lactic acid directly via fermentation rather than current processes which require chemical conversion of L-lactic acid produced from food based feedstocks such as starch. The objectives of this work will be to demonstrate lab scale production of pure D-lactic acid from the modified Geobacillus strains and to design and demonstrate the industrial manufacturing processes. Finally the project will develop a business model and identify commercial partners for future Industrial Research grant applications.
PolyPhotonix Limited and the Centre for Process Innovation have developed novel light emissive devices that can be used in Fast Moving Consumer Goods such as greetings cards, Christmas decorations and advertising. They can also be used in medical applications for areas such as neonatal/postnatal jaundice, in wound healing and for cosmetic applications. The consortium will demonstrate that they can take this technology from the Manufacturing Readiness Level of 4, where demonstrators have been shown in a laboratory scale, to Manufacturing Readines level 8 where pilot line manufacutre on a roll to roll tool is demonstrated.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Replacing the PCB with flexible (printed) electronics overcomes these constraints to enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Novel manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the components. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). Autoflex+ follows-on from Autoflex (101538) which completed on 31st March 2015. Within Autoflex the consortium (PragmatIC, Optek, CPI and Henkel) developed a process suitable for integration of flexible and PE components. Autoflex+ will develop this further to establish a pilot manufacturing system for automated integration and assembly of products based on PE components.
The aim of this project is to provide new formulations that bring about a step change in biopharmaceutical yield and quality by improving product stability through the most protein degradation sensitive/impactful areas of downstream processing (DSP). This is a novel approach to improving process efficiency as currently protein products have comparatively limited stability in the existing default DSP buffers. To develop a new platform of formulations and formulation strategies this collaborative project will bring together the formulation expertise of Arecor with the DSP expertise at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB) and The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI). The platform of formulations and the formulations strategies developed can then be applied to reduce production cost of all biologics to pharma and ultimately cost to healthcare providers. These new formulations may also enable the production of biotherapeutics that are currently very difficult/impossible to manufacture.
This project will deliver a pipeline of engineered Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells with characteristics and performance that will enable improved manufacture of novel biologic products. Recent research has identified critical metabolic check points that control CHO cell growth, and characterised pathways controlling product integrity and yield. In this project we will use this knowledge to deliver multiple and combinatorial gene ‘edits’ in CHO cells to produce cells that deliver efficiency and cost gains in manufacturing processes for biotherapeutic products, and broaden the product range that can be manufactured in this system. The improved performance of the cells will be assessed in fermentors and scaled-up to “manufacture ready” processes to ensure that project outputs are translatable into the manufacturing setting and outcomes are widely disseminated to the UK academic and commercial bioprocessing communities.
Metals related manufacturing represents about 10% of all UK production activity and machining Metals related manufacturing represents about 10% of all UK production activity and machining remains the most important manufacturing process. According to the Manufacturing Technologies Association, in 2012 the UK machine tools, cutting tools and tool/work-holding equipment output was estimated to be around £960 million (£835 million exported) and the sector is estimated to employ 6100 people.
This project seeks to develop intelligent tooling systems, which will improve the efficiency of machining processes. This project intends not only to support the UK machining sector, but in doing so will generate valuable know how for the UK.
We propose to investigate the feasibility of producing high resolution lithographic electrodes and printed active material gas sensors on polymer substrates using ink-jet and aerosol jet techniques for the detection of compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath associated with the diagnosis and management of diabetes. Nanomaterial mixtures will be carefully formulated and deposited onto plastic substrates and subsequently modified to selectively detect VOCs. The printed gas sensors will be then excited using Applied Nanodetectors new patented innovative UV excitation technique and then exposed to test gases mixtures to optimize the sensor performance.The feasibility of making low cost gas sensors on plastic substrates for a diabetes breath test is novel and innovative. The main objectives are A) to design, fabricate and test a pre-industrial evaluation test sensor array on a range of plastic substrates to be used as a breath test for diabetes. B) explore the deposition of sensitised nanomaterial deposition system for active area coatings. C) Evaluate suitability for a range of gases for monitoring of diabetes (VOC’s) and benchmark performance against existing Si based technology.
The partners will use graphene to develop novel ink formulations that can be used within printed electronic devices. The properties of the graphene layers deposited will be characterised in detail along with the properties of the printed electronic devices manufactured.
This project will build on UK expertise in recycling of household waste to recover a clean cellulose. A new process has been developed to efficiently break this cellulose down into sugar which can be used to produce, for example bioethanol - the green fuel component of petrol, as well as other high value chemicals such as those used in construction materials and intermediates in chemical processes. The sugar from waste will substitute for the sugar currently used which is produced from crops including sugar beet which requires land, pesticides and fuel to grow and harvest. The benefits are environmental, less waste to landfill, economic, the waste derived sugar is sustainable and cost competitive and social as land can be used for food grade sugar production instead of for the sugar required for fuel and other industrial purposes.
The project will investigate the feasbility of producing very high quality barrier films in standard test formats for high quality flexible encapsulation of OLED and plastic logic display applications.These exhibit ultra low water vapour transfer rates (WVTR) of less than 1 X 10-6 g/m2 per day using self healing multilayers of high quality CVD graphene and Atomic Layer Deposited (ALD) amorphous alumina multilayers. The work will explore the neccessary industrial process parameters to ensurelowest price point at which the minimum barrier properties can be delivered The resultant barrier films will be benchmarked against existing barrier coatings in WVTR and mechanical flex tests. The industrial innovation will be producing a fully flexible, self-healed (contiguous), optically transparent film of 25cm2 (beyond the current state of art 4cm2) using advanced characterisation and quality control metrologies to ensure iterative development. The resultant understanding gained from the feasibility studies will be used to model and anticipate future larger film systems and will be also exploitated where possible by barrier seeking end users and through joint KTN activities to target these communities.
This project addresses the production of succinic acid (SA), a top-added value chemical, through the fermentation of crude glycerol, the main biodiesel byproduct. Currently, SA is manufactured from petrochemicals or by fermentation of glucose. The bioconversion of crude glycerol will valorise this renewable side-stream, significantly improving the biorefinery economy, and providing an economic, sustainable SA production route with reduced carbon footprint. A combination of experimental methods at a range of scales, computational tools, and market analysis will be employed in order to: prove the feasibility of the downstream process, benchmark the succinic acid product against market standards, optimise the scale up of the fermentation process and identify and engage commercial end users. The aim is to make a significant step in reducing the risk of the proposed bioprocess to attract industrial investments, hence moving closer towards its industrial uptake and application.
The environmental and social concerns surrounding the use of fossil fuels and food crops make lignin a compelling target as a source of chemicals. Considered of low commercial value, lignin is one of the few potential natural sources of aromatic chemicals. This project targets the useful aromatic building blocks for platform chemicals within lignin that can be substituted in plastics' intermediates. This project builds on a Technical Feasibility project undertaken by Biome Bioplastics and the University of Warwick, and seeks to demonstrate that metabolites extracted previously at laboratory scale can be produced in a commercially viable manner through the selective disintegration of lignin using bacteria and/or enzymes in fed batch/continuous reactors of scale. Larger trials will be undertaken at CPI and the resultant demonstration quantities of chemicals will be converted into novel materials, for evaluation in a high value market.
This project addresses the use of printed electronics (PE) manufacturing to produce battery-free RF-powered systems, exploiting existing and widespread Near Field Communication (NFC) infrastructure. The project will develop processes to optimise the RF system performance, including antenna-tuning, and exploit PE processes (printed conductive circuity, low-cost integration) scalable to low-cost, high-volume applications in consumer packaging, document and brand security, in addition to wireless sensor networks for defence, healthcare and medical devices. The project will advance the state-of-the-art by developing technologies for high volume manufacturing of self-tuned energy-harvesting power units (modules), which fits the requirements of flexible, disposable and wearable applications. The project brings together a strong consortium with varied and complementary expertise in printing of conductive structures (WCPC, CPIIS), logic circuitry (PragmatIC), test (PragmatIC, CPIIS, CU) and integration (PragmatIC, CPIIS).
The project partners will integrate printed electronics (PE) and conventional (CE) solid state electronics in order to improve functionality, reduce cost and increase scalability of a photonics based medical device. New methods will be employed in order to produce luminaires, printed sensors and PE/PE or PE/CE interconnects. These will be combined with conventional electronics such as memory and processors to make the device smart and therefore ensure patient compliance with the treatment regime.
Project BAMBOO will develop a wearable and flexible phototherapy device for the treatment of a number of medical conditions including but not limited to wound healing, neonatal hyperbilirubinia or Psoresis. The device will be produced by printing methods it will incorporate sensors to allow the measurement of disease progression, monitor infection and manage dosage.
This project is designed to manufacture a useful class of organic chemicals, used in paint formulations, starting with a waste by-product from the chemical industry and transforming it to the desired material by use of biocatalysis. The current chemical route employs caustic soda and sulphuric acid, and as well as producing the desired product, also co-produces a large amount of waste. The biocatalytic route is very materials-efficient and also much more energy-efficient. The project brings together the University of Northumbria, an acknowledged centre of excellence in Biotransformations, Biocatalysts Ltd, a well-established manufacturer of biocatalysts for industrial use, CPI, a UK based technology innovation centre and part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult providing open access facilities for the development and scale-up of biotechnology based processes, Beckers, a multinational Paint Manufacturer, who specialise in Coil Coatings and Chemoxy International Ltd, a medium sized UK chemical company who currently manufactures a range of eco-friendly solvents for use in surface coatings applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Machining of materials such as titanium and nickel-based alloys used in aerospace and nuclear components is typically limited by the amount of heat generated at the cutting zone. Heat is removed by the use of a cutting fluid which acts both as a coolant and a lubricant. A cutting fluid is a complex formulated fluid consisting of many additive components, each providing a specific function such as anti-corrosion and lubrication properties amongst others. The consortium has identified a real opportunity to formulate a novel performance additive with higher heat removal properties that can be incorporated into cutting fluids, to allow end-users the ability to machine at even higher cutting speeds enabling increased productivity and cost savings. This business-led project working with the HVM Catapult will exploit this opportunity to formulate a new performance additive using novel chemicals, materials and processing, to target boundary layers lubrication and the associated packaging chemistry to ensure stable delivery and that it complies with regulatory requirements. This additive will provide significant value to UK industries in particular sectors utilising difficult to machine materials.
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In this feasibility study, the ability to rapidly produce light emitting organic formulations with a tailored or bespoke emission spectra through intermixing of various emitter species will be undertaken. Instead of manufacturing long chain, multi-functional group, electroluminescent polymers with a complex, slow and expensive synthesis path, we will study the feasibility of using accurate formulations of a number of emitters to tailor the emission spectra. Should this prove feasible, then it would be possible to 'dial up' a particular emission spectrum by rapidly formulating known electroluminescent polymer or small molecule constituents. This will allow rapid prototyping of organic light emitting devices for a number of different niches, including but not limited to, medical devices for phototherapy.
The material properties of components in many high value applications need to be carefully controlled so that the durability of the components is understood and predictable. One common technique for heat treatment is by quenching which is time consuming and can induce residual stresses in the component which need to be relieved to prevent failures in operation. A range of quench media are available, including water-, oil- and polymer-based, each having specific heat transfer characteristics, which create specific material properties in the quenched components. Closely controlling the precise location and rate of heat transfer during the quenching process would enable more localised mechanical and material properties to be achieved. The objectives of nanoQuench is to formulate nanofluids to enable more defined quenching, leading to less residual stresses within the component allowing end-users greater productivity and cost savings. The final objective of the project is to analyse the nanofluids after quenching to determine how many times it can be used before needing to be replaced and to assess on methods for re-use, recycling and on safe disposal.
‘Power Generating & Energy Saving Windows’ is a project which addresses Innovate Uk's ‘Material Innovation for a Sustainable Economy’ call, with its objectives of reducing the energy consumption and material usage involved in the manufacturing of solar cells, while enabling a new market through the development of colourless transparent photovoltaic thermal control window glazing units, that both generate and save energy as a single multifunctional building material.
The project combines supply chain partners for Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV), including developer and producer of glazing Polysolar, PV materials specialist Merck and HVM Catapult partner CPI.
The project will be innovative in developing PV manufacturing processes, without using critically scarce materials. As well as reducing energy consumption in its life and its manufacture, the PV window product offers a significant environmental impact through power generation and savings.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
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Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
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Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
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Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Awaiting Public Project Summary
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.
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Anaerobic Digestion (AD) is a process in which microorganisms break down organic matter, in the absence of oxygen, into biogas (a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane) and digestate. The biogas can be used directly in engines for heat and power or can be cleaned and used in the same way as natural gas or as a vehicle fuel. The digestate can be used as a fertiliser or soil conditioner. AD is an effective way to treat organic wastes – such as food wastes, animal slurries and waste crop residues. The UK Coalition Agreement (2010) sets out a goal for a huge uptake in anaerobic digestion capacity.
Currently, AD is carried out in large tanks that can be expensive, bulky and often inefficient.
CPI is developing a novel concept for a tubular reactor that, it is hoped, will be shown to be more efficient, take up less space and have a lower purchase price. CPI is patenting this idea and has built a prototype system that will be used to prove the concept.
The project will deliver a scientific appraisal of the technology, alongside a design and
exploitation package that will potentially lead to an innovative high-value product being
developed by UK plc.
Printed electronics analogues for many of the familiar electronic building-blocks (memory, logic, power, displays, etc.) are now available as discrete components. Although printed electronics offers the future possibility to fabricate multiple components on a single substrate this is not yet technically feasible and, in many cases, will not be economically feasible. Component fabrication-cost is optimised for manufacture as discrete devices with different sensitivities to substrate, material utilisation and processes. Similar to conventional electronics, integrated printed electronics components needs to be assembled using discrete components to establish early applications. This project will exploit the integration/assembly capabilities developed at CPI to integrate display and logic components onto a flexible printed interconnect substrate. Further the project will develop a novel process for connecting conventional rigid PCB to flexible printed circuitry.
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This collaborative R&D project focusses on meeting the large market opportunity (estimated >$1B global market by 2018) for developing a viable low cost production route for clear, flexible, high and ultra-barrier, polymer based substrates and encapsulant materials, for photovolatic applications (including thin film inorganic, organic and dye-sensitized (DSSC) solar cells); flexible organic solid state lighting applications; and flexible lightweight robust display applications.
The processes developed will be compatible with in-line process tools, that are viable and scalable to commercial material widths (1m+) and production line speeds.
The structure of the flexible barrier material will overcome market brick walls with current products such as cost, barrier performance and suffcient barrier retention with time.
The alginate oligomer fermentation project, ALGIFERM, translates 20 years of academic research into an industrial scale feasibility study. The Centre for Process Innovation Ltd.(UK) is leading the scale-up, whereas AlgiPharma AS (Norway) needs the final product as an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient in its development of medicines for cystic fibrosis, COPD and chronic wounds, like diabetic foot ulcers. The biofilm disrupting and antibiotic potentiating technology that has been developed by AlgiPharma was recently published (Khan S., et al., Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2012;56(10):5134-41). If the scale-up is successful it will facilitate the introduction of novel medicinal products to the market that will ease patient suffering and potentially reduce healthcare costs. In addition it will be a new tool in fighting multi-drug resistant bacteria. Both AlgiPharma and CPI will obtain help from SINTEF (Norway), in this innovative collaborative effort between Norwegian and English researchers.
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New reactor technologies are set to allow products that have traditionally been made in batches to be produced in a continuous manner. These reactors have the potential to transform manufacturing sectors by reducing energy, waste and the cost of manufacture and distribution. The technology will allow companies to use a single reactor for a number of products rather than investing in a number of task specific batch reactors. Therefore this project aims to develop an adaptive 'Dial a Product' control system to deliver the precise control required for these unique high value low volume manufacturing systems. Bringing together control design and analytical techniques to complement these reactors will enable the reactors to reach optimum performance quickly and efficiently as the manufacturer switches between products.
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Tata Steel UK, Innovative Small Instruments, the Centre for Process Innovation and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London will partner in a collaborative R&D programme designed to address the issues of rework and waste materials associated with high grade steel manufacture in the UK. Using the collective expertise of the consortium partners, the project will develop an innovative non-destructive laser based system to measure continuous as cast steel at temperatures >1000deg C for the detection & indentification of process defects. It is predicted that this technology will increase yield, streamline production processes & increase product quality & consistency. A prototype unit will be developed for installation & trials on an actual casting plant, operated by TATA Steel, to optimise the technology & quantify the actual commercial, environmental & social benefits. Opportunities for technology transfer to other industry sectors will be identified.
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The current OTFT technology suitable for high volume manufacturing does not possess the performance uniformity or stability required for a commercially viable OLED product. This project is focused on understanding and overcoming the technical challenges of using organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) to drive OLED displays which are the “holy grail” of the $100 Billion global displays industry. This innovation will enable key solutions to facilitate the integration of OTFTs with OLED frontplanes. This project is highly innovative and will open doors to a wide range of applications such as tablets, smartphones, game consoles, smart displays and notebook PCs.
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The rate of discovery of newer Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) continues to decline. However, novel physiological effects and intellectual property are being generated by the use of co-crystallisation of different solid materials. Co-crystals are two or more crystalline components that are held together by comparatively weak bonding, but which provide differentiated pharmacological actions. However, co-crystals are currently difficult to manufacture for large scale production, with many unreliable batch processing techniques utilised. CPI has, however, developed a novel method for producing co-crystals of APIs using a stable and continuous process, and intend to develop the process further to production scale. Co-crystallisation of APIs will extend the life of patented drugs and will bring opportunities for new effects and value to the large UK pharmaceutical industry, and through licencing, to the global API markets.
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The UK Battery Waste Regulations now in force is increasing the volume of battery waste required to be recycled. Project ReCharge sets out to utilise this resource to improve the supply of Zinc, Nickel, Lithium and other metals presently going to landfill or being exported as waste. The UK has no battery waste treatment facilities at present for some battery types. This project will establish a low energy method of utilising this waste stream. ReCharge will use known industrial biotechnology processes to extract and concentrate the metals contained within various portable battery types. This process enables biological extraction from high metal content wastes, it has to compete economically with present smelting technologies. The project aims to economically recover metals from battery waste; by cultivating micro-organisms, optimising growth and recovering the metals produced. The technology will be exploited through a licenced UK waste processing company.
The MarineIB Project is an industrially focused study to assess the technical and commercial feasibility of developing a new product for the industrial fermentation market. Marine Bioproducts (MB), a Norwegian based SME have the capability to tailor the production of a peptone, derived from fresh atlantic salmon tissue, specifically for fermentation applications. Whilst there are a number of established peptones in the market, the number derived from marine resources are extremely limited with little supporting performance information. Through the MarineIB experimental programme MarineBioproducts and the Centre for Process Innovation aim to determine the value of MB salmon peptone to the market.
This study is seen as the first step towards achieving the joint UK/ Norway vision of an integrated marine based biorefinery to maximise the value of marine resources.
The Small Scale Anaerobic Digestion Technology (SSAD-Tech) project will develop novel small scale AD process technology for the treatment of organic waste streams. The process results in biogas - used for electricity or heat generation - and digestate - which can be considered as a non-fossil fuel derived fertiliser.
The consortium is led by The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and includes CNG Services Ltd, Wardell Armstrong LLP and a specialist digestate testing company that is currently being introduced to the partnership. With grant funding from the government-backed Technology Strategy Board and will run over two years.
A part of the governments High Value Manufacturing Catapult, CPI is home to existing anaerobic digestion development facilities and is ideally placed to coordinate, direct and deliver the project.
The small scale AD system will be designed to generate income and power for enterprises such as farms and food manufacturers. Sustainable disposal of biomass waste is another benefit. The projects aim is to reduece capital costs of small AD plants, while delivering a process capable of accepting biomass feed streams, saving significant land fill tariffs and generating power, and/or revenue fromt he sale of power to the end user.
This project aims to develop novel bio insecticides from fusion proteins that deliver insecticidal toxins and across the target insect gut. The results of the project will be the creation of targeted fusion protein insecticides; this requires the development of processes for their economic production, acceleration of expression rate, and optimisation of associated fermenting and freeze drying. The detailed objectives are: (i) production of a "first candidate" fusion protein (ii) increase in expression and fermentation (iii) investigation of downstream processing and freeze drying (iv) delivery formulation for maximum efficacy and shelf stability (v) conduct all glasshouse/field trials to establish efficacy under end user conditions providing data for submission for registration, including effects on non target organisms (vi) application of these processes to streamline the development of follow up candidate fusion proteins
The FIPS (Functional Integrated Plastic Systems) project is a collaborative R&D programme to develop a unique process and demonstrators for a integrated smart system (ISS) printable plastic electronics component. The component is aimed at adding value and enhancing functionality for a consumer refill product in the $485bn global FMCG packaging industy (in 2012, Visiongain).
Specifically, the project will demonstrate a finite-state machine causing the end-user's product (or product packaging) to give a visual response to a refill-device interface. The project will deliver novel, modular manufacturing processes for these ISS components, using high volume stamping and high-resolution inkjet printing. FIPS will realise this interactive smart label by taking these printed electronics components and combining them with conventional electronics. A global supplier of goods into the home and healthcare FMCG marketplace will drive the product concept, working to ensuring the demonstrators appeal to consumers, while the consortium’s technical expertise will maximise the potential for eventual manufacturability. The modular nature processes will be flexible enough to apply know-how from FIPS into a variety of plastic electronics applications beyond intelligent packaging, such as mainstream print media, licensed post-project into existing UK capability. The project will thus build a complete supply chain between UK material suppliers and end users, with the innovations realising new products, developing cheaper processes and adding value to UK consumers.
Knowledge Transfer Partnership
To implement innovative monitoring, modelling and control technologies in order to increase process understanding which will accelerate process development and optimisation.
Picture Window will demonstrate an electrically controllable optical film for the built environment able to change its reflectivity characteristics to enable the control of solar radiation entering the building and to provide digital display of information at low-resolution. Using a new generation of high performance smectic A liquid crystal materials and recently developed know-how in the fabrication of LC device structures on plastic, the project will extend the applicability of the technology into the built environment.
Knowledge Transfer Partnership
To develop new methods and models for controlled production of pharmaceutical and nutraceutical co-crystals and polymorphs to enhance the range of services in the health sector.
‘Morris’ is a 3 year program to develop large area (~1m diagonal and up), reflective colour display surfaces, made by printed/plastic electronic processes, for use in applications such as command/control rooms, electronic whiteboards, posters and signage, and architectural/ interior design (electronic wallpaper). The partners are Hewlett-Packard, Timsons Ltd, and PETEC (CPI Ltd). The final output will be the specification of a pilot line and material set, projected costs and yields, and demonstration devices, components, processes and equipment; to be sufficient to secure investment in pilot and then full manufacturing.
Morris is based on a novel, industry leading approach to reflective colour, particularly applicable to large area plastic displays; innovative highly transparent and highly conducting structured electrodes, and advances in organic semiconductors/TFT fabrication processes. These will be developed and integrated, focusing on performance, yield and cost. The partners and subcontractors cover key areas of the developing UK Plastic Electronics supply chain.
The colour reflective display is enabled by the use of novel optical reflectors sandwiched between coloured electro-optic modulation arrays. A significant part of the project is to develop new, cost effective means of fabricating these optical enhancement layers, and develop improved EO modes to form the displayed image. The optical performance approaches that of print, a SNAP print quality is obtainable. Work on new colourant synthesis in the UK has been contracted, and this work will have benefits for many display applications. Colour reflective displays are particularly suited for outdoor use, so the requirements and demonstration of lightfastness is important.
To enable a reflective display, the optical losses must be minimized. To enable active matrix addressing of the pixels to give complex imaging at high speed, the array must have a small optical footprint, and the semiconductor material be of sufficient performance to give a small device. Previously, optical apertures of ~90% have been demonstrated, but this is not high enough, under the Morris project arrays of >95% aperture are being fabricated using novel electrodeposited materials and techniques.
A range of organic semiconductor materials are being evaluated from suppliers within and external to the project, from the UK, Europe and the US. This gives the project the opportunity to select the most appropriate materials set for each application targeted. Under the project, class leading device performance has been demonstrated in useful devices.
The third strand of work under Morris is to develop a scalable approach to plastic substrate handling. Historically, plastic substrates have either been handled as sheet materials, laminated to rigid carriers and put through existing wafer and panel equipment, or have been processed in a full scale roll to roll fashion. The former does not scale easily to larger area, and has cost drawbacks, the later has yet to demonstrate high areal yield for complex functional devices. A clean spool cassette system, similar to the approach taken in wafer fab FOUPs, is being developed, where a 20-30m length of film at up to 650mm width can be handled without the front surface ever coming in contact with the equipment or the rest of the film material. As the cassettes are self contained, processing equipment can be designed in a modular fashion, without the need for materials feed rate matching. Sensitive coatings and lithography can be carried out without mechanical damage or contamination. Spool cassette equipment will be prototyped and the performance of the cassette handling verified during the Morris programme, this will then form the basis of a common means of handling, transporting and processing film in the plastic electronics industry, scalable from R&D to pilot and initial volume manufacturing.
The Morris programme will also investigate the development of new applications and exploitation routes for plastic, reflective colour displays and other plastic electronics systems, with the aim to put the UK at the forefront of development of underlying science, implementation technology and process equipment development. Plastic reflective colour displays are inherently low power, have low materials usage, and are processed at low temperatures, leading to reduced environmental footprints in manufacture, use and end of life.
Project PPAG (Photovolatic Architectural Glass) aims to develop a working prototype/demonstrator of a scaled up OPV glazing module, which meets defined market application performance & specification requirements. The project aims to deliver a proof of technical feasibility both at laboratory scale & for large area module application, & evaluate electrical conversion efficiency, durability & lifetime. Areas where the project aims to meet specific application requirements include transparency & colour neutrality; electrical efficiency; cell size; durability; & processing costs.
The project proposes a collaborative research programme to test an innovative, algae based solution for the significant reduction of large scale industrial CO2 emissions. Represented within the project consortium is a large scale energy generators (SembCorp Utilities UK) and the process industries, including cement production (Cemex UK) and lime production (Steetley Dolomite).
The project has been recently realigned following trials in which the difficulties associated with growing algae to a sufficiently high concentration and at a sufficient rate have been explored. The primary outputs this project now include:-
Further development of lighting arrangements for the photo bioreactor
Site testing of algae performance on actual flue gas
Delivery of a scalable design
Provision of a business model based on project results that will assist with partner decision-making in algae investment.
The project will focus on the use of bioreactors for the growth of algae in order to present outputs substantiated by experimental results.
This project has delivered the world's first fully functioning and field- tested 1kW stand alone PEM fuel cell powered system for the pumps in an environmental monitoring outflow plant at Solvay Interox’s Warrington site, using ACAL Energy's novel low cost platinum free cathode technology, FlowCath®. The project has built a deep understanding of the design & engineering requirements of the integrated 1kW system, as well undertaking detailed research into the unique fluid flows and stack designs for ACAL Energy's novel approach, including researching MEAs and materials to ensure durability and performance. Integral to the project has been the work to meet the challenging safety requirements of the installation on the chemical plant as well implementation from the outset of remote management capability of the system. The project has been led by ACAL Energy, who built and researched the stack configurations as well leading the field trial; Southampton University, developed simulation tools & fluid modelling; Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells, world leading catalyst and MEA specialists, provided the MEA for project; Solvay Interox hosted the field system and UPS Systems plc installed & configure the integrated system. The grant enabled the consortium of high-calibre, experienced groups with funding that balanced the high risk as well accelerated the deployment of this UK invented technology.
The objective of the Advanced Process and Production Light Enable Sensors (APPLES) project was to develop new multi-parameter sensing technologies for monitoring production status in biochemical processes. Through demonstration of functionality and benefit for end-user applications, the technology would possess the potential to be exploited into process control. Anticipated potential gains through improved knowledge and characterisation of the production process include a reduction in raw material consumption, failed product and production times. The target markets include pharmaceutical, biofuels and chemical processing industries. A main milestone has been the successful development of multiple sensing technologies in a proof-of-concept unit that was deployed to multiple industrial partners for evaluation. The project has successfully addressed areas of potential for the technologies to serve industry needs and has identified the next steps in development required to realise a commercial product.
Small Business Research Initiative
The public description for this project has been requested but has not yet been received.
The public description for this project has been requested but has not yet been received.
The aim of the MENDIP’s consortium is to create a sustainable controlled pilot manufacturing capability for the production of a range of OLED devices. The Mendips consortium will evaluate, procure, facilitise and commission a state of the art pilot production facility for the production of both small molecule and polymer light emiiting device technologies.
The system will be utilised to investigate some of the challenges faced by industry in scaling up the technology. Polymer OLEDS are fabricated by the coating of extremely thin layers (