VIRTUAL / AUGMENTED REALITY
MANUFACTURING FOR CELL AND GENE THERAPIES JUST GOT THE BOOST IT NEEDS
Virtuosi , powered by QxP , the world ' s first Virtual Reality ( VR ) education platform for pharmaceutical manufacturing , has expanded its offering , announcing a suite of state-of-the art video content and highly immersive VR training experiences for cell and gene therapies production .
Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products ( ATMP ' s ) – comprising of cell , gene and tissue-engineered therapies – are delivering breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases and are widely acknowledged to be the future of medicine . Yet the sophisticated manufacturing facilities , exacting training requirements and complex bioprocessing procedures make these advanced therapies much more costly and demanding to produce .
" Traditional methods are not working to effectively and quickly train the thousands of new operators being hired for the intricate processes required to produce advanced therapies ," said Brian Duncan , COO of Quality Executive Partners – the inventor of Virtuosi .
" Cell and gene therapies can save lives right now , but the challenges around manufacturing are often the rate-limiting step in getting these drugs to the patients whose lives depend on them . We understand that time is of the essence and our Virtuosi development team had to move fast .
" Making mistakes is not an option : there are patients waiting for potentially life-saving treatments and it is not an option for the companies that need to
STERILE MANUFACTURING IN PHARMA HAS SEEN STRONG BENEFITS IN USING VR .
be efficient and cost-effective to keep producing more treatments ."
" There are big challenges that we need to work on together right now to secure the future and potential of ATMPs for patients ," added Dr . Heather Main of ATMP Sweden . " I have found
Good Manufacturing Practices ( GMP ) for the ATMP field to be an extremely exciting space with currently limitless opportunity for learning and exponential growth with currently few ' experts ' in the diversity of critical areas ."
Advanced therapies , often customproduced for each individual patient , are expensive , sometimes costing more than US $ 1 million per treatment .
Sterile manufacturing in pharma has seen strong benefits in using VR , as Virtuosi is already widely deployed in large and smaller enterprises , significantly reducing error rates and greatly speeding up training programmes , improving training effectiveness and delivery of product . �
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