IUCRC Phase I NJIT: Center for Integrated Material Science and Engineering of Pharmaceutical Products (CIMSEPP)

The pharmaceutical sector in America is a major, trillion-dollar industry, having broad impacts on the US population through benefits to their health and well-being. Despite US leadership, the industry is facing major problems, including, difficulties in developing newer molecules, high cost and lengthy time of bringing a new drug to market, lack of adequate and efficient regulatory science, consumer drug affordability, quality issues, and drug shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated many of these challenges. These issues point to an acute need for innovative research and technical advances to develop high-quality drug products, achieve manufacturing efficiency, and support US-based pharmaceutical manufacturing. This IUCRC phase I project addresses such issues through establishing a joint two-university Center for Integrated Material Science and Engineering for Pharmaceutical Products (CIMSEPP), with NJIT as a Lead Site and Minnesota as a Partner Site. Its mission is to advance and promote fundamental understanding of the material properties, drug-additive interactions at molecular and particulate level, as well as manufacturing processes, on product quality and performance, at lower cost.

The CIMSEPP team will develop fundamental understanding of structure-function-performance of drug products and process engineering under three industry vetted Research Thrusts, which will, 1) promote predictive enhancement of key properties of drugs, their engineered counterparts, and their blends for improving product quality, and 2) significantly reduce time and cost of drug product development. Key advances include, 1) identification of critical particle properties that impact fine particle behavior, 2) better understanding of their impact on cohesion and behaviors of powders, and 3) enabling accurate prediction of properties of blends as well as compacted tablets. That understanding combined with particle and crystal engineering, will enable development of mechanistic models and predictive tools required for enabling manufacturing decisions and better products. NJIT's expertise in particle engineering and contact-physics will enable development of predictive models for particle agglomeration, drug content uniformity, and tablet weight variation using dimensionless parameter(s) based on material sparing measurements of particle properties such as size, shape, and roughness. Compared to the data-driven approaches, such models and computer simulations for process modeling, will enable better understanding of traditional and emerging technologies, promoting efficient design of high-quality products and manufacturing processes, while reducing time and cost for product and scalable process development.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.