Professor Alastair Florence
Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
Personal statement
Director of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation (CMAC) and associated 45 PhD Doctoral Training Centre. Leads the new world-class CMAC National Facility within the Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) at the University of Strathclyde offering access to academic and industrial users to state-of-the art processing, analysis and characterisations facilties and support. Expertise in crystallisation and physical form control and characterisation of pharmaceuticals spanning polymorphism, solvate, co-crystal and salt formation and studies of amorphous systems. Extensive experience in the formation of pharmaceutical particles in continuous processes using a range of technologies as part of the CMAC programme. Interests also in the development and application of new technologies to control and monitor crystallisation and pharmaceutical solids.
Approaches for the characterisation of particles are also widely used and physical analysis of crystalline pharmaceuticals with a focus on the influence of crystallisation processes on structure and critical pharmaceutically relevant attributes that dictates product performance. Exploitation of X-ray powder diffraction techniques for phase identification, structure determination from powder diffraction data and in-situ phase surveys including local order using variable-temperature X-ray powder diffraction are key areas.
Has published over 120 peer reviewed research papers in these areas and currently supervises a large multidisciplinary research group including pharmacists, chemists and chemical engineers.
Prize And Awards
- Best Poster Award @ CMAC Annual Open Day 2018
- Recipient
- 25/10/2018
- Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain Conference Science Medal
- Recipient
- 9/2004
Publications
- Investigation of aerosol jet printing for the preparation of solid dosage forms
- Turner Alice J, Prasad Elke, Florence Alastair J, Halbert Gavin W
- International Journal of Pharmaceutics Vol 671 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2025.125288
- Probing the interplay between drug saturation, processing temperature and microstructure of amorphous solid dispersions with synchrotron X-ray phase-contrast tomography
- Bordos Ecaterina, Das Gunjan, Schroeder Sven LM, Florence Alastair, Halbert Gavin W, Robertson John
- International Journal of Pharmaceutics Vol 669 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2024.125018
- Optimisation of additively manufactured coiled flow inverters for continuous viral inactivation processes
- Barrera Maria Cecilia, Leech Damien, Josifovic Aleksandar, Tolouei Anita, Alford Gareth, Wallace Martin J, Bennett Nicholas, Wildman Ricky, Irvine Derek J, Croft Anna, Özcan Ender, Florence Alastair J, Johnston Blair, Robertson John, Brown Cameron J
- Chemical Engineering Research and Design Vol 213, pp. 126-136 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2024.11.040
- A hybrid system of mixture models for the prediction of particle size and shape, density, and flowability of pharmaceutical powder blends
- Salehian Mohammad, Moores Jonathan, Goldie Jonathan, Ibrahim Isra, Mendez Torrecillas Carlota, Wale Ishwari, Abbas Faisal, Maclean Natalie, Robertson John, Florence Alastair, Markl Daniel
- International Journal of Pharmaceutics: X Vol 8 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpx.2024.100298
- Flow‐Xl : a new facility for the analysis of crystallization in flow systems
- Turner T D, O'Shaughnessy C, He X, Levenstein M A, Hunter L, Wojciechowski J, Bristowe H, Stone R, Wilson C C, Florence A, Robertson K, Kapur N, Meldrum F C
- Journal of Applied Crystallography Vol 57, pp. 1299-1310 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1107/s1600576724006113
- Integration of a model-driven workflow into an industrial pharmaceutical facility : supporting process development of API crystallisation
- Pickles Thomas, Svoboda Vaclav, Marziano Ivan, Brown Cameron J, Florence Alastair J
- CrystEngComm Vol 26, pp. 4678-4689 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d4ce00358f
Professional Activities
- Finance and Public Administration Committee
- Speaker
- 17/12/2024
- Association for Crystalization Technology (ACT) 25th Larson Workshop
- Invited speaker
- 30/9/2024
- PharmaTech Integrates 2024
- Participant
- 19/9/2024
- 2024 Process Development Symposium Europe | AIChE
- Invited speaker
- 26/6/2024
- CMAC Summer School 2024
- Participant
- 12/6/2024
- ACHEMA 2024
- Participant
- 10/6/2024
Projects
- DPN-MED: Digital Plug-and-Produce Network for Sustainable Medicines Development and Manufacturing
- Fitzpatrick, Stephen (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Co-investigator) Johnston, Blair (Co-investigator) Markl, Daniel (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2025 - 30-Jan-2025
- DPN-MED: Digital Plug-and-Produce Network for Sustainable Medicines Development and Manufacturing
- Fitzpatrick, Stephen (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Co-investigator) Johnston, Blair (Co-investigator) Markl, Daniel (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2025 - 30-Jan-2025
- SHARPEN: SHARing data to accelerate Pharmaceutical manufacturing Efficiency across trusted Networks
- Johnston, Blair (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Co-investigator) Markl, Daniel (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2026
- A Regulatory Science Network for the Digital Transformation of Medicines Development and Manufacturing (10113547)
- Markl, Daniel (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Co-investigator) Johnston, Blair (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2024
- Correlating Digital and Experimental Chemical Space to Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Processes
- El-Habbak, Omar (Researcher) Brown, Cameron (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator)
- This project will deliver a novel, interpretable machine-learning model for predicting powder flow considering physical, chemical, and computed molecule/particle features. The output of this model will facilitate the rapid development of new medicines manufacturing.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 01-Jan-2027
- DTP 2224 University of Strathclyde | El-Habbak, Omar
- Brown, Cameron (Principal Investigator) Florence, Alastair (Co-investigator) El-Habbak, Omar (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 01-Jan-2027
Contact
Professor
Alastair
Florence
Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
Email: alastair.florence@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 4877