In a recent move, an international initiative is going to transform biologics as well as drug manufacturing by way of AI-driven multi-platform integration. The AI-optimized BALANCE (Bioreactor automation for learning and adaptive networked control of experiments) platform is going to make utmost use of the real-time sensing and control systems from Nicoya integrated with automation from Labman Automation, integrates bioreactor technologies from CPI, and AI development from Basetwo in order to make bioprocessing much smarter, more efficient, and faster.
Led by Labman, this 20-month collaboration is going to be supported by a $2 million grant coming from Innovate UK as well as the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NIRC IRAP) by way of the Canada-UK Collaborative R&D Initiative. The objective of the project is to go ahead and deliver an AI-optimized demonstrator platform that integrates bioreactor technologies along with real-time sensing as well as control systems. It is going to make utmost use of the joint expertise of partners, thereby bringing together the latest when it comes to automation, AI, and also real-time process control in order to make upstream bioprocessing seamless and ensure high yields, lower costs, and enhanced scalability in terms of next-gen therapeutics. The idea is to elevate the precision as well as efficiency when it comes to biologic drug production by offering a faster and smarter path to the market.
It is well to be noted that bioprocessing happens to be an often-inefficient part in terms of manufacturing, which can actually slow down biopharma development. Optimizing the bioprocessing needs makes bioreactor operation more dynamic, dependent on real-time data coming from biosensors. At the core of the BALANCE initiative happens to be a closed-loop AI control system, which is powered by the digital twin platform of Basetwo. The machine learning models are going to interpret the real-time data coming from the bioreactor as well as biosensors, thereby helping with adaptive control of experimental conditions in terms of real-time optimization of the performance of the bioreactor. Labman is going to build an automated modular sampling platform, which will automate the molecular evaluation and also integrate seamlessly with the Alto SPR biosensor of Nicoya so as to get instant yield data.
The digital twin technology from Basetwo further elevates the efficiency by way of predicting quality outcomes along with decreasing the dependence on costly lab testing. CPI is going to validate as well as benchmark the system by making sure that practical scalability along with commercial viability for biologics manufacturing takes place.
This project indeed marks a major step forward when it comes to digital bioprocessing, thereby paving the way for enhanced efficiency, decreased variability, and also faster time to market by way of breakthrough biologics.
According to the co-founder and CEO of Nicoya, Ryan Denomme, until now the sensing technology has been too slow as well as intricate in order to help truly reactive bioprocessing. Label-free biosensing happens to be a very crucial element in order to unlock the potential for automation as well as AI so as to drive the efficiency within biomanufacturing and hence overcome the complexity that is inherent to most of the systems that are dealing with the diversity of living organisms.
He added that they do look forward to working with their BALANCEÂ partners in order to solve the bottleneck.
The head of bioprocess automation at Labman, Thomas Smith, said that this is indeed the next step for biologics as well as drug manufacturing, which integrates Industry 4.0 approaches for bioprocessing.
CPI’s director of biologics, Brendan Fish, says that pharmaceutical companies know that they have to embrace digitization in order to stay competitive. By way of this collaboration, BALANCE is bridging the gap through validating as well as scaling the AI-driven bioprocessing solutions. According to Thouheed Abdul Gaffoor, the CEO of Basetwo, AI-enabled digital twins happen to be the next frontier in intelligent manufacturing. By way of combining their hybrid modelling approach, along with advanced sensing as well as automation, this partnership moves them closer to autonomous biomanufacturing.
