Automated lab excites third largest state: new biomanufacturing pilot plant set to advance technology.(NEWS, TRENDS & TACTICS)

Recognized as an academic enterprise for advancing sustainable development through five strategic areas--research, teaching, working with partners to create environmental solutions, reducing its carbon footprint on campus and engaging students--the University of Massachusetts-Lowell is focusing on the manufacturing industry to further its efforts.

The campus recently opened a fully automated biomanufacturing pilot plant with three corporate partners: Invensys Process Systems, Wyeth Biotech and Dakota Systems. The facility has three purposes: help the state's biomanufacturing companies bring new pharmaceuticals closer to commercial production, advance technology and enable students to work with industry experts on the same projects.

"The biotechnology companies that use the plant and, just as importantly, students who train there will learn about process automation and optimization using the latest technology," said Carl Lawton, director of the Massachusetts BioManufacturing Center at UMass Lowell. "Our students will graduate with advanced knowledge that they can use immediately."

With automation as the leading technology that products will be created with, it is hoped that procedures leading to compliant manufacturing processes statewide will result from education at the center. Lawton added that productivity, quality and cost of biomanufacturing operations will be a constant theme in applied research and process development. The first state-of-the-art machine to be designed by the three corporate partners of the center and installed was a bioreactor that both speeds up the process of new drug development and teaches students about hardware design for the manufacturing industry.

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