The project partners
The FASS project consortium is composed of four partners: The startup Oryl Phonotics dedicated to bringing the instrument to market; ALPhANOV, a research and technology organization to support technology maturation. EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC; a European Research Consortium to enable customer development and instrument demonstration; and FHWN, a centre for pharmaceutical research to explore value-added applications of FASS in drug discovery and development.
FASS officially started on June 1st and will last for 30 months. The new funding of € 2.5 M will help the consortium to deliver to the market a disruptive and sustainable solubility measurement instrument that reduces cost and drug compound consumption, increases measurement throughput while achieving cutting-edge performances in sensitivity and reliability. The consortium is led by EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC, the European research infrastructure for early drug discovery and chemical biology with its central office in Germany.
The composition of the consortium is ideal to achieve this objective, with complementary expertise in photonics and laser technologies, drug screening and discovery, and pharmaceutical formulation. The grant will be instrumental for technological maturation, customer development, exploration of value-added applications of the technology in drug discovery and development and to improve market competitiveness, positioning and credibility.
Consortium
ALPhANOV
ALPhANOV is a French research and technology organization specializing in laser and optical technologies. It is renowned for its cutting-edge innovations and its state-of-the-art facilities, driving advancements in various industries. To accelerate the development of the instrument, ALPhANOV is helping with the 3D designs, electronics and optical simulations to improve and optimize the instrument.
The center’s expertise will bring the technology all the way to a pre-industrialization level, right before mass production.
EU-OPENSCREEN
EU-OPENSCREEN is the European research infrastructure consortium (ERIC) for early drug discovery and chemical biology. Together with its 27 partner sites in 8 countries, the consortium offers expertise in screening and medicinal chemistry. As part of its mission, the ERIC supports academia and industry to develop new chemical tool compounds and disruptive technology to advance drug discovery.
As the FASS coordinator, we support the overarching management and communication of the project, perform the testing of the instrument at one of our partner sites and come with a network of potential customers and early adopter to pick the technology.
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz
FHNW is a University of Applied Sciences and Arts that includes nine schools and different campuses across Northwestern Switzerland. The Institute of Pharma Technology is part of the School of Life Sciences with currently seven research groups working in different areas of Pharmaceutical Technology from formulation of small-molecular drugs to delivery of macromolecules. A particular focus of the group of Prof. Kuentz is the characterization of poorly water-soluble drugs and research on oral formulation approaches.
The focal contribution in the FASS project is WP4 in which novel industrial applications of the FASS measurement technique are identified and assessed.
ORYL Photonics
Oryl Photonics is an innovative technology company spin-off from EPFL, Switzerland, that aims to be the reference in solubility and aggregation measurements. Leveraging advanced nonlinear light scattering, Oryl Photonics has developed a laboratory instrument to measure how drugs dissolve in liquids, providing a critical information for the R&D of pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies, while saving precious resources.
The startup is dedicated to the prototype-, customer- and business development and will introduce the FASS instrument to the market.