Turbo-Charging Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Simulations
Demand for biopharmaceuticals is strong: biopharmaceutical active ingredients – in other words, genetically engineered drugs – accounted for seven of the ten top-selling medications in the world in 2018. And the proportion is set to rise, as biopharmaceuticals can be used to combat conditions such as multiple sclerosis and anaemia, as well as many forms of cancer and rare diseases, which cannot be treated with chemical and synthetic agents. But such efficacy comes at a price.
This makes biopharmaceutical manufacturing extremely complex – it requires microorganisms driving reactions in bioreactors, involves expensive experiments carried out on the basis of trial and error, and is based on empirical values. “At the moment, the biotech industry lacks in-depth process knowledge. People that the manufacturing process works, but they don’t know the reasons why or how exactly it functions,” explains Christian Witz of the Institute of Process and Particle Engineering at TU Graz.
While chemically produced medicines are “small molecules” that are relatively easy to manufacture and are available in tablet form, biopharmaceutical drugs usually comprise hundreds or thousands of atoms.
