Massachusetts Joins Institute for Innovation in Biopharm Manufacturing

Massachusetts will be a partner in the nation’s first manufacturing innovation institute in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The $250 million biopharmaceutical innovation institute is a national, public-private partnership, with federal matching funds provided by the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Massachusetts will anchor the northeastern node for the institute, which will be known as the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals or NIIMBL. NIIMBL will be led regionally by a consortium of small, medium, and large biopharmaceutical industry partners from across the supply chain, along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Quincy College, UMass Lowell, UMass Medical School, and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

The shift to biologics, cell therapies, and gene therapies presents new challenges for the manufacturing of biopharmaceutical treatments at scale. NIIMBL is a process innovation effort that aims to reduce the risks associated with manufacturing new therapies, improve efficiency in order to deliver new therapies to patients more quickly and at lower cost, and increase the quality and safety of new biopharmaceutical products. The project will also train an advanced manufacturing workforce, capable of working in new biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies.

“Being selected as the northeastern node for the National Institute for Innovation in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing, and the federal funding that comes with it, will further strengthen Massachusetts’s position as the world’s leading ecosystem for drug development, from discovery, right through to commercialization and fabrication,” said Travis McCready, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. “This Institute will build connections between our biomanufacturing innovators in industry and academia, and will connect the innovation going on in manufacturing with the innovation going on in the lab. This will translate into technical innovations to improve the biomanufacturing process, allowing for new drugs to reach and help patients more efficiently, and at lower cost.”

For more information visit: http://www.masslifesciences.com/news/announcements/