Description du projet
Moderniser la production biopharmaceutique
Les produits biopharmaceutiques sont essentiels dans le domaine des soins de santé, ce qui a été clairement mis en évidence par le rôle déterminant des vaccins à ARNm pendant la pandémie. Toutefois, la fabrication de produits biopharmaceutiques repose encore sur des technologies de production par lots obsolètes et des procédures de développement de processus empiriques. Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet CoDiBio se propose de développer un jumeau numérique qui englobe la toute première usine continue, intégrée et entièrement numérisée pour la production d’ARNm. L’usine fera appel à des modèles hybrides innovants pour le suivi et le contrôle en temps réel, le transfert de connaissances, l’analyse de scénarios et la planification expérimentale. Les activités du projet profiteront également à d’autres processus émergents tels que la chimie des flux pour les processus catalytiques durables et la microfluidique pour la synthèse contrôlée de nanomatériaux.
Objectif
Biopharmaceuticals are essential for the medical treatment of diseases like immune deficiencies, cancer, and diabetes, and provide an indispensable component to the health care system worldwide, as showcased by mRNA vaccines in the recent pandemic. Despite this success, manufacturing is still based on traditional, outdated batch production technologies, and on process development procedures based on historical experience and empiricism leading to many inefficiencies, like very long values of time-to-market. There is an urgent need to introduce modern integrated, continuous, and fully digitalized production processes, to also cope with the upcoming cell and gene therapies and the emerging personalized medicine. I develop here revolutionary process development and operation methodologies to enable this.
These are based on a Digital Twin, which includes the first continuous, integrated and fully digitalized plant for producing mRNA. The “engine” are innovative hybrid models for each unit of the plant, which are updated on real time through continuous learning techniques. These provide the predictive capabilities needed for monitoring and control, knowledge transfer, scenario analysis and experimental planning.
I will develop a new generation of hybrid models and innovative machine learning algorithms and provide the experimental evaluation and validation of my methodologies. Other high precision continuous processes, like flow-chemistry for sustainable catalytic processes or microfluidics for the controlled synthesis of nanomaterials, will benefit from these results.
I am a recognised pioneer in the scientific foundations of continuous operation in biopharma. This inspired me in developing this disruptive Digital-Twin-based methodology and cope with the associated high risk. With about 110 PhD students advised in my career and now active in Academia and Industry, I know how to inspire a new generation of scientists with the novel science emerging from this project.
Champ scientifique
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsfluid mechanicsmicrofluidics
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologygenetic engineeringgene therapy
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologypandemics
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
546 36 THESSALONIKI
Grèce