Complex Medicines comprise an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) in combination with a delivery agent to both protect the drug and ensure it reaches the intended location within the body. Some examples of successful complex medicine therapies and vaccines, include Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs), developed for the treatment of certain cancers, and Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) which delivered the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
To meet the challenges of modern medicine, therapies need to provide opportunities for an improved side effect profile, targeted drug delivery, and efficacy against previously intractable targets. These challenges are driving the industry towards novel, precision treatments, which often require the development of complex medicines. Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) is pioneering the next generation of complex medicines through the development of cutting-edge technologies and assays.
MDC helps innovators to develop insightful, novel characterisation techniques for complex products so they can:
• Understand the attributes that impact safety and efficacy
• Improve the properties of the molecule
• Meet the requirements for Investigational New Drug (IND) applications
• Accelerate the development of complex medicines
To bring novel complex medicines to market, we need new analytical methods to characterise, optimise and develop them.
At MDC we have developed an advanced analytical platform to address biodistribution, cell targeting and biological response for a diverse range of complex medicines.
Sarah Brockbank
Strategy Leader - Complex MedicinesChallenges We Can Help With
Our expertise in complex medicines
Did you know?
In addition, MDC has established long-term partnerships with leading UK research centres providing a national network to support innovators and grow the UK’s position in this significant area of potential. Most recently, Catapults and leading Universities across the UK have come together to establish a brand new Intracellular Drug Delivery Centre, which will provide a Centre of Excellence for the discovery and development of nanomedicines.
Capabilities
- Formulation-based characterisation of complex medicines through biophysical assays and visualisation of drug-carrier complex via super-resolution microscopy
- In vitro assays and complex cell models have been established to measure cellular uptake, intracellular trafficking, release of payload and downstream efficacy.
- A comprehensive in vivo imaging capability utilising Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in combination with radiolabelling expertise, optical imaging and ultrasound is available to assess biodistribution and targeted delivery of complex medicines in vivo.
- Additionally, ex vivo tissue analysis, using immunofluorescence and advanced microscopy techniques or label-free mass spectrometry imaging, provides a detailed understanding of tissue penetration and cell targeting alongside molecular pathology for a comprehensive analysis of tissue response.
- Definition of Target Product Profiles (TPP) using sector specific expertise considering clinical landscape, drug safety and regulatory affairs. The TPP can then be used to support our client in the development of a focused preclinical discovery plan.
Did you know?
The success of the SME sector over the past five years has resulted in pipelines of valuable assets, with a developing focus on innovative complex medicines. Indeed, complex medicines now make up 12% of all the drug assets in the discovery pipeline for SMEs*. This is an emerging area of growth, which was identified in MDC’s ‘Shaping the UK into an Epicentre for Complex Medicines’ SODN report in 2021
*GlobalData, MDC analysis
Resources:
- A report was published with proposed definitions to provide a clearer scope of ‘complex medicines’. This work was done in partnership with SEDA Pharmaceutical Development Services and identified the technologies requiring innovation and support.
- MDC’s Connects webinars explored opportunities and challenges in the discovery and development of complex medicines. The series is available as a consolidated resource of modern drug discovery knowledge.
- MDC partnered with CPI to engage UK stakeholders, mapping the complex medicines landscape and developing recommendations to support the sector for national growth and impact, to produce the 2021 State of Discovery Nation report.
Connects Webinar Series
MDC’s Connects webinars explored opportunities and challenges in the discovery and development of complex medicines. The series is available as a consolidated resource of modern drug discovery knowledge.
MDC partnered with CPI to engage UK stakeholders, mapping the complex medicines landscape and developing recommendations to support the sector for national growth and impact, to produce the 2021 State of Discovery Nation report.
State of the Discovery Nation Report
2021Reshaping Medicines Discovery... It's ambitious, it's achievable
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The collaborative partnership with MDC has enabled us to work together to secure multiple Innovate UK grants. MDC has supported Alchemab in developing a therapeutic for Huntington’s Disease through antibody characterisation, iPSC model development, biodistribution studies, innovative imaging and their general neurodegenerative expertise. The partnership has allowed us to utilise capabilities at MDC, such as state-of-the-art PET imaging abilities, which aren’t available elsewhere.
Alchemab Therapeutics
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RevoloBio have had a collaboration with MDC for three years, which continues to provide valuable and high-quality data on our molecules. The input from MDC has directly impacted operational and strategic decisions for our projects and allowed us to move forward with our clinical studies. The MDC team are extraordinarily competent and use a wide range of up-to-date technologies. It has been a seamless and effective collaboration that we will continue.
Dr Roly Foulkes
Chief Scientific Officer, Revolo Biotherapeutics
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It has been a pleasure working with MDC as their scientists are pleasant and have a broad range of talents. Importantly for projects like ours, they openly and professionally exchange ideas with SMi’s scientific team and keep us abreast of their research developments. Not surprisingly, we are therefore looking forward to continuing and growing our close partnerships for the foreseeable future.
Dr Andy Thompson
CEO, SMi Systems
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It has been great to access the Artificial Intelligence expertise at Medicines Discovery Catapult, the team have taken an innovative approach that adds value to our product and will benefit our customers. Our collaboration was easy to establish and worked extremely well.
Phil Jones
CSO, BioAscent
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As an SME, working with MDC allows us access to scientific know-how and in vivo imaging techniques that would be impossible through any other route. The closeness, timeliness and flexibility of the collaboration significantly accelerates our ability to develop product. MDC perform an absolutely vital role in supporting us getting our novel treatments to clinical trials.
Dr Gareth Wakefield
CTO, Xerion Healthcare Ltd
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Working with MDC has provided expertise and intellectual input. It has also enabled access to a wider network of companies providing specialist services.
Dr David Templeton
Technical Director, N4 Pharma
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For early-stage SMEs in this space, I thoroughly recommend engaging with MDC who have the end-to-end knowledge in complex medicines, can support your in-house team and provide access to key equipment that start-ups may not have.
Professor Helen McCarthy
Chief Executive Officer, pHion Therapeutics
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By tapping into MDC’s unique drug development expertise and facilities, we are confident we will accelerate the preclinical development of our drug delivery system and its commercialisation.
Dr Anna Perdrix Rosell
Co-founder and Managing Director, Sixfold Bioscience
Our Experts
Sarah Brockbank
Strategy Leader - Complex Medicines
Sarah Brockbank
Strategy Leader - Complex Medicines
Sarah Brockbank leads the strategy for Complex Medicines at Medicines Discovery Catapult.
In this role she draws on internal expertise and the external environment, through membership of national programmes and a portfolio of client projects, to develop and implement a core strategy for complex medicines that is responsive to the needs of this emerging area.
Sarah has 35 years’ of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She is a molecular biologist with a focus mainly in target identification & validation and has worked across a broad range of disease areas. Sarah was a Drug Discovery Project Leader at AstraZeneca, and she also has extensive experience in the leadership and management of large public-private consortia and collaborations.
Dr Benedetta Arno
Lead Scientist
Dr Benedetta Arno
Lead Scientist
Benedetta is an expert scientist, with over 10 years of research experience within academia and industry. She has experience in leading in vivo drug discovery projects, with the main focus on characterising complex medicines distribution and efficacy using a broad range of imaging modalities including PET, CT, optical imaging and ultrasound as well as ex vivo tissue analysis. With great project management skills, she has successfully delivered multiple projects across a variety of diseases and therapeutic areas. Benedetta has a BSc in biotechnology and MSc Hons in biomedical science before completing her PhD in Neuroscience.
Dr Lorna Fitzpatrick
Lead Scientist
Dr Lorna Fitzpatrick
Lead Scientist
Lorna is a Lead scientist with over ten years’ of experience in molecular biology and genetic engineering in primary, stem and cancer cells. Lorna has a PhD from St. George’s University of London and carried out post-doctoral research at Manchester Metropolitan University before joining Medicines Discovery Catapult.
In her current role, Lorna develops reporter models of disease pathways for both in vitro and in vivo readouts. She also has developed expertise in establishing capabilities to characterise intracellular delivery of complex medicines.
Dr Martina Sykorova
Senior Scientist - Complex Medicines
Dr Martina Sykorova
Senior Scientist - Complex Medicines
Martina is a senior scientist with experience in cell biology techniques and genetic engineering approaches for adoptive therapy. Martina completed her master’s degree in medical genetics and molecular diagnostics at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, followed by a placement at the Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine department at the University of Liverpool. During this time, she focused on highly multiplexed detection of RNAs and proteins in single cells, using CYTOF mass cytometry.
In 2018, Martina joined the Research and Development team at Immetacyte Ltd, where she helped develop tumour infiltrating lymphocyte engineering platforms, which is advancing towards clinical application. In 2023, Martina joined Complex medicine’s team at Medicines Discovery Catapult, working on a novel high-throughput, automated workflow to screen lipid nanoparticle payloads and formulations, as well as enhanced in vitro methods to interrogate their biology in detail.
Dr Aadarash Zia
Scientist - Drug Delivery
Dr Aadarash Zia
Scientist - Drug Delivery
Aadarash is a scientist in drug delivery at MDC with 7 years of experience, specializing in the study, design, and exploration of bio-nanoparticles/formulations for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Following her graduation, she worked as a researcher at an Oncology & Radiotherapy institute, focusing on developing radiotracer-payload carriers for non-invasive in-vivo imaging.
She furthered her expertise by completing a PhD at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash University, Australia. Her interdisciplinary research involved developing novel multifunctional nanoparticles tailored for brain targeting. Her contributions extend to unravelling the intricacies of intracellular uptake within a microfluidic-based human blood–brain barrier on-chip model.
At MDC, her role is multidisciplinary, ranging from formulation development and optimization to setting up in-vitro oncology cell models. This allows her to study cellular responses, drug interactions, and other aspects relevant to drug delivery in research.
Dr Nisha Ponnappan
Scientist - Complex Medicines
Dr Nisha Ponnappan
Scientist - Complex Medicines
Nisha joined as a scientist at MDC in 2021 after obtaining her PhD in Biological Sciences from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her academic research focussed on identifying and characterising small peptide sequences from animal toxins that can act as drug delivery vectors in mammalian cells. The work led to an award of patent for a novel cell-penetrating peptide sequence in 2021.
At MDC, Nisha is involved in complex medicines projects. Her work mainly focusses on characterising efficacy of drug delivery vectors and nucleic acid therapeutics in vitro along with development of bioassays for better understanding of behaviour of nanoparticles within the cellular environment.
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