Aesica Pharmaceuticals, a leading global pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), has doubled its development capacity - manufacturing multiple drug products up to phase III clinical trials at Queenborough.

With the addition of the new capabilities, Aesica can now develop and manufacture a customer product from early formulation development through clinical manufacture and into commercialisation - covering all aspects of product life cycle on the one site. This process will now be a seamless end-to-end service offering for the customer.

The company’s high potent and controlled drugs service offering has been significantly expanded at Queenborough as a result of the new centre. Whilst previously the company only provided commercials scale manufacturing capabilities for these drug classifications, it now offers full formulation and development capabilities in these specialist fields. The site handles high potent drugs for any active up to SafeBridge Category 3, together with controlled drugs, with licenses for both Schedules 2 to 4. Moreover, the facility is therefore experienced in handling drugs that are both highly potent and at the same time controlled.

Says Ian Muir, managing director of Aesica Pharmaceuticals, “In response to growing customer demand, and as part of our on-going strategy to meet the needs of the market to simplify the supply chain with reliable, highly efficient, single source solutions, we have taken the strategic initiative to ensure that our high capacity Queenborough Development Centre, which doubles our development capacity, combined with our commercial manufacturing capabilities at the facility, provides a complete service offering for formulation, development and product manufacturing for multiple customers.”

‘High potency is a key contract services market, with strong growth potential, requiring a mix of highly specialised and advanced technological skills and capabilities. We have set these resources in place and have now taken the strategic initiative to combine them with full clinical and commercial scale manufacturing capacity in this highly complex field from a single site location – further enhancing our offering to customers”, he added.