Capra Biosciences has been awarded a new $7.5 million two-year project agreement, under which it will leverage its bioreactor platform to demonstrate the manufacture of three active pharmaceutical ingredients to be selected in cooperation with the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Biomanufacturing has the potential to manufacture many of the chemicals we use today not only more sustainably, but also where and when we need them. This is an extraordinary opportunity to apply the Capra platform to the important issue of pharmaceutical ingredient shortages,” said Elizabeth Onderko, Capra’s cofounder and CEO. “We look forward to working with the BioMaP-Consortium, their government sponsors, and our partners to increase pharmaceutical manufacturing accessibility in the U.S.”

Successfully creating the pharmaceutical ingredients using a common platform will further illustrate the potential of Capra’s technology to be easily tailored to create a broad spectrum of molecules in a highly scalable manner.

Leveraging AI and Modeling for Quicker Manufacturing

Capra has assembled a team of companies with expertise spanning AI modeling, bioprocess scale up, and biomanufacturing. The team will leverage AI design tools to rapidly design and onboard each of the APIs, as well as predict their viability and scalability before production begins.

Using Capra’s modular bioreactors, together with these models, the team will demonstrate production of three target APIs at pilot scale. With the success of this project, Capra will have a template for rapidly scaling ingredients for pharmaceuticals as well as other applications quickly and cost effectively using their modular platform and locally sourced raw materials.

This project is funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR); Office of Industrial Base Manufacturing and Supply Chain (IBMSC), under OT number #75A50123D00003.