Aesica, the global contract manufacturing organisation (CMO), announces its second major innovation board partnership following the recent annual Genesis conference, a famed hotbed of future innovation.

The METRC Innovation Awards support new research between universities and companies in the fields of nanotechnology, science and engineering. Aesica, the University of Durham and the University of Leeds were jointly awarded the grant to investigate and accelerate the development of processes that will improve cost efficiencies and increase manufacturing capacity at its Cramlington site.

Earlier this year, the company established the Aesica Innovation Board (AIB) to identify and commercialise new innovative technologies that help to bridge the growing R&D gap and the company is actively targeting academia and innovative businesses to form development partnerships with.

This latest partnership builds on the successful collaboration with Bradford University earlier in the year. The new partnership with the University of Durham and the University of Leeds will be tasked with developing new or improved routes for the manufacture of an API. A detailed kinetic study is already underway and based on this, new flow processes will be developed before being scaled up at the Aesica Cramlington plant.