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Dec 01, 2023

AMICSTL forms partnership with API innovation center to research pharmaceutical ingredients

Leaders of the initiative to build an advanced manufacturing center in north St.

Leaders of the initiative to build an advanced manufacturing center in north St. Louis announced a partnership Thursday with a nonprofit group to lead research and development of pharmaceutical ingredients.

The Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) Innovation Center @ Cortex also will work with the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center-St. Louis (AMICSTL) to facilitate workforce development needed for the advanced manufacturing of the pharmaceutical ingredients.

"By partnering with AMICSTL, we will be able to accelerate collaboration among a network of companies, academic and research institutions, and startups to deliver solutions for drug supply chain fragility," Tony Sardella, chair of the API Innovation Center, said in a statement. "This is of critical importance as our dependence on foreign countries for pharmaceuticals and API has created both a public health and national security risk."

AMICSTL is a nonprofit group that is raising funds to build a $55 million advanced manufacturing center adjacent to the campus of Ranken Technical College in north St. Louis’ Vandeventer neighborhood. That effort received a major boost last month when the Missouri General Assembly included $15 million in the state budget to support construction.

Sardella said under the five-year agreement, the API Innovation Center will provide funding for research and work is expected to begin at AMICSTL's initial facility, the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center at Ranken, until the advanced manufacturing center opens.

About 78% of active API manufacturers are currently located outside of the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

AMICSTL cited a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report that concluded: "…there is a critical need for the development of sustainable manufacturing technology to control the costs for the re-shoring of APIs to the U.S."

The API Innovation Center will be the biomedical and life sciences "vertical" lead for AMICSTL. The first partnership was formed in August 2022 with Boeing as the lead of the aerospace vertical, said Kory Mathews, CEO of AMICSTL and a former Boeing vice president for enterprise services.

"By leveraging the region's strengths in bioscience, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing, all together, we will drive broad, equitable and diverse economic growth in an area of critical national importance," Dennis Muilenburg, chairman of the AMICSTL board of directors and former Boeing CEO, said in a statement.

In addition to Biomedical and Life Sciences, AMICSTL is building "vertical" capabilities in agricultural tech, automotive, construction, energy, geospatial and logistics.

AMICSTL is based on an advanced manufacturing center established in 2001 in Sheffield, England. AMICSTL has set a goal to attract companies that will build facilities near it and around the region. The Sheffield center has about 400 companies in its ecosystem, including Boeing and "that's a small version of what we're going to do here," Muilenburg has said.