Autumn 2026

Welcome to the Autumn issue of IPT! While October began with warm welcomes, the temperature is quickly dropping and the days are getting shorter as we brace for the end of the year. As the seasons change, it is the perfect time to reflect on all the latest technological innovations in the pharmaceutical industry.

Carterra announced a research collaboration with AstraZeneca to develop hardware and software aimed at advancing lab-in-the loop drug discovery. The effort brings together scientific and technical expertise to connect laboratory systems, software and data infrastructure with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven discovery workflows. Lab-in-the-loop – the model in which AI systems propose drug candidates, wet-lab experiments generate data to test those predictions, and the resul

Green electricity has an important role to play in making pharmaceutical manufacturing more sustainable. Translating environmental objectives into practical progress, however, requires renewable energy solutions tailored to each site’s infrastructure, electricity demands and operational requirements

Could digital integration and smarter workflows transform the NHS’s pre-analytical process and improve patient safety?

As bioprocessing becomes more connected and data-driven, can protein quantitation move beyond the lab to deliver more actionable insights where they matter most?

How can downstream processing keep pace with increasingly complex biologics? Greater selectivity and process intensification could help build more flexible and efficient purification strategies

What if every experiment could inform the next? Lab-in-a-loop architectures are bringing scientific reasoning and automation together to accelerate biopharmaceutical R&D

Artificial intelligence can generate antibody sequences far faster than conventional expression workflows can test them. A fit-for-purpose cell-free triage layer can turn digital designs into early expression and binding evidence, while reserving mammalian systems for the questions only they can answer

How do you design laboratories that can accommodate capabilities you don’t yet know you’ll need? As pharmaceutical pipelines diversify, that question is becoming central to lab planning

Ensuring accurate vessel pressure control can be crucial for process quality. To achieve this, optimising valve response time is key, which means that integrated, sterilisation-in-place-capable systems can have an important advantage

IPT speaks to Ali T at LotusDx about the challenges for accessible diagnostics, from developing accurate and user-friendly at-home tests to building trust and connecting testing with effective healthcare pathways

The health and nutritional benefits of vitamins are well known, but they are becoming increasingly important to drug developers for their value as multifunctional excipients