Upperton Pharma Solutions, a leading UK-based contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), has announced the completion of its state-of-the-art sterile manufacturing facility in Nottingham, UK.
This new £7 million facility complements Upperton’s existing 50,000 sq. ft Trent Gateway site. Purpose-built to align with updated EU GMP Annex-1 regulations, the 7,000 sq. ft facility will focus on producing aseptic and terminally sterilised small volume liquids and powders for parenteral, nasal, and pulmonary delivery.
The facility is equipped to handle formulation development, clinical manufacturing, and analytical testing, with capacity for batch sizes of up to 2,000 vials, pre-filled syringes, and pre-filled cartridges for liquid formulations, as well as pre-sterilised powders.
This expansion represents a significant step forward for Upperton, which already specialises in the development and manufacture of small molecule and biological non-sterile oral, nasal, and pulmonary dosage forms, supporting clients from early development through to late-stage clinical manufacturing.
Nikki Whitfield, Chief Executive Officer at Upperton, commented: “We are delighted to complete the build of our sterile facility. The combined experience of our leadership team in sterile facility builds and subsequent operations ensures that we are ideally placed as a CDMO partner of choice for small to mid-sized biotech and pharma looking to get into the clinic quickly with fast access to sterile manufacturing services.”
The sterile manufacturing facility includes two cleanrooms featuring advanced VHP isolation technology and will provide GMP manufacturing of sterile drug products. This operation will benefit from Upperton’s existing full-service formulation development and quality control laboratories.
Jon Austwick, Director of Quality and Compliance at Upperton, stated: “This expansion illustrates our continued investment in our capabilities to support drug developers to scale and accelerate the path to delivering safe and effective medicines to patients. The facility has been built with the highest level of quality and is a testament to our internal teams and build vendor who have worked tirelessly over the past 12 months to bring our vision to life.”
The introduction of sterile drug product manufacturing further enhances Upperton’s service portfolio, which already includes formulation development across a variety of dosage forms, clinical trial supply, and late-stage manufacturing for non-sterile products, covering both small molecules and biologics.
While the commissioning, equipment installation, and validation processes are ongoing, Upperton will utilise its existing research and development and analytical teams to deliver pre-formulation and stability studies for proof-of-concept products designed for parenteral, nasal, and pulmonary delivery.
