The four year, DKK28.6m project was announced by a consortium of academics and manufacturers last week with the stated aim being to study how powder components of pharmaceuticals are affected by temperature and humidity during shipment.
However, the overall aim of the research is to safeguard drug production in Denmark for the long term according to project leader Jukka Rantanen from the University of Copenhagen.
He told us “our goal is to keep manufacturing knowhow in Denmark and by this means make sure that the local large and medium sized companies - Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, LEO Pharma etcetera - stay in Denmark.”
Rantanen – who is also working with innovative manufacturing technologies like extrusion, inkjet printing and 3D printing – said new project will focus on factors affecting functionality of powders used by the pharmaceutical and food industries.
“We will look into water-solid interactions and how these interactions affect different particles” he said, explaining that “We have interest on optimizing functionality of these powders from the flowability and stability point of view with the final goal creating an optimal fine chemical product.”
Industry collaboration
The project is financed by the University, the Danish innovation foundation – Innovationsfonden – and Fertin Pharma, Novozymes and separation tech firm SiccaDania A/S, catalyst supplier Haldor Topsøe as well as a number of food ingredient manufacturers.
Project partners will have immediate access to the research findings according to Rantanen, who said the findings will be made more widely available in due course.
“Denmark is a small country and there is a very close and well-established industry-academy co-operation structure” he said, adding that “my research group is actively working with 5+ other pharmaceutical companies based in northern Europe.”