(500d) Cmac: A Partnership Approach to Precompetitive Collaboration for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Research

Modern research increasingly demands multidisciplinary approaches with many national funders increasingly recognizing the potential benefits for supporting the development of close relationships between industry and academia. CMAC is a large collaborative UK based manufacturing research centre that is focused on advanced crystallization and accelerating the adoption of continuous manufacturing to enable future medicines supply chains. Led from the University of Strathclyde, CMAC brings together a multidisciplinary academic team from across several UK universities (Bath, Cambridge, Imperial College, Loughborough, Leeds and Sheffield) as well as a range of active international academic partnerships. Now in its second phase and starting a new 7 year, £50M programme, CMAC was co-created with industry partners to ensure activities and outputs align with areas of existing and emerging industrial need. Our members include GSK, AZ, Novartis, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Takeda and Roche as well as over 20 technology providers and SMEs. This scale and breadth of expertise brings excellent opportunities to inform research direction and inspire researchers however it also demands that all aspects of the collaborations are well co-ordinated and supported. The collaborative approach to establishing this critical mass activity has also attracted significant investments from UK research councils & agencies (EPSRC, SFC/HEFCE) as well as charities and pharmaceutical industry and has stimulated a number of subsequent initiatives aimed at transforming the UK research and innovation system. In addition to the manufacturing research programme, CMAC has active programmes in other key areas, namely: skills and training, facilities development and industrial translation, aimed at maximisingthe benefits to all of our partners.

This presentation will review the model and different approaches used across CMAC’s precompetitive programme and will highlight challenges and lessons from such large collaborative activities involving academia and industry.