Research & Technology Centre, Hyderabad
The new Research & Technology centre adjoining our current R&D facility in Hyderabad augments our capabilities in providing superior scientific solutions and serve as the nerve-centre for Sai’s integrated discovery and development services to our customers globally.
Intelligent Lab Design to meet highest standards of safety and productivity
Can lab design enhance productivity and safety of process development? An emphatic yes, we’d say! As one of India’s fastest growing CDMOs, our success rests in our ability to consistently deliver on the highest expectations of productivity and safety, not just from regulators, but from our large pharma innovator customers as well. To this end, we believe that ‘Intelligent Lab Design’ is a key enabler.
With a nuanced understanding of lab functioning distilled from hundreds of man-years of specialized experience, the labs at our new Research & Technology Centre in Hyderabad embeds many ‘intelligent’ features that enhance our work.
Ergonomically designed with logical workflows, each of the 24 labs is self-sufficient with dedicated analytical support and compliant storage space. They have easy access to related capabilities including a wide range of technology platforms and in-house process safety lab. All labs have an optimal configuration of customized fume cupboards to carry out specific chemistries ensuring global safety standards and are easy to maintain, among many other subtle yet effective features.
These attributes, we believe, will go a long way in making our labs safer and more productive, as we accelerate delivery of complex chemical synthesis for our customers.
Advanced automation to enable seamless data capture during process development
DATA is arguably the most important ingredient in the development of modern medicine. For a typical NCE development journey that extends over several years, rich and accurate data captured across various stages of development provides a deeper understanding of the critical process parameters. This makes the process more robust for successive phases and scale-up, while serving as a source of insight for its overall sustainability.
Recognizing the importance of this vital input, we have ensured that all Process R&D Labs at our new Research & Technology Centre are supported with high level of automation to enable accurate online data capture during development. This data serves as the basis for expedited and accurate scale-up using software such as DynoChem and Aspen. A pilot facility co-located as part of the R&D campus enables better coordination of scientific teams for efficient delivery of early phase supplies. We also have, over the years, invested in systems and culture for protecting and managing customer data across the development life cycle.
Lean approach to enhance productivity
Investments in state-of-the-art lab infrastructure at our new Research & Technology centre are being backed with associated efforts in process improvement. As part of the Sai GO (Governance & Operational Excellence) initiative we have assiduously worked to enhance productivity in our labs following a lean approach, using 5S and other techniques. This has allowed us to reduce wastage of time and resources, enabled improvements such as smarter planning of daily drills, standardized storage of labware, prominent display of project plans, among others, collectively helping us deliver the development milestones on time.
One of the unique features in the new R&T Centre is the ‘Satellite Analytical Lab’ where we have co-located an analytical lab as part of each process chemistry lab. This will enable enhanced interactions between chemists and analysts and online analytical support to ongoing experiments.
Range of platform technologies to make your product development better
Platform technologies are considered a valuable tool to improve efficiency and quality in drug development and make the processes sustainable.
At our new Research & Technology facility opening this August in Hyderabad, we have a range of platform technologies including flow reactors, bio & chemo catalyst screening, tools for particle engineering, separation technologies, molecular distillation, continuous extraction and photochemical reactors, to name a few.
These capabilities help us enhance the quality of product development on a number of dimensions such as making hazardous processes safe and scalable, developing greener & selective processes, improving the bioavailability of APIs, accelerating scale-up and delivery, developing processes for thermally sensitive and highly water-soluble compounds, among many others.
Collaborative workspaces for engendering innovation
The design of workspaces can have significant influence on collaboration, and thereby the productivity of teams. This is particularly important in the context of new drug development. At our new Research and Technology centre opening this month, we have designed our workspaces with the purpose of spurring collaboration, which is also one of our core values.
Conceptualized as a Corridor of Innovation, the arterial corridor extending through the facility creates a natural space for various cross-functional teams to meet and exchange ideas in an informal setting. The aesthetic environs with luxuriant green spaces have various amenities provided for comfort and convenience.
The workspaces too have been planned with consolidation of relevant work areas, functionally sound equipment and convenient meeting spaces to make for a convenient and inspiring work environment conducive for research.
