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.

Prizes 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

more prizes and awards

Publications

Humidity responsive tripeptide crystals: Piotrowska Roxana, Hesketh Travis, Wang Haozhen, Martin Alan R G, Bowering Deborah, Zhang Chunqiu, Hu Chunhua T, McPhee Scott, Wang Tong, Park Yaewon, Singla Pulkit, McGlone Thomas, Florence Alastair, Tuttle Tell, Ulijn Rein V, Chen Xi; Virtual Symposium: Systems Chemistry (2020); https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3830736
Manual versus microfluidic-assisted nanoparticle manufacture : impact of silk fibroin stock on nanoparticle characteristics: Solomun Jana I, Totten John D, Wongpinyochit Thidarat, Florence Alastair J, Seib F Philipp; ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering Vol 6, pp. 2796-2804 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.0c00202
Development and characterisation of a cascade of moving baffle oscillatory crystallisers (CMBOC): Raval Vishal, Siddique Humera, Brown Cameron J, Florence Alastair J; CrystEngComm Vol 22, pp. 2288-2296 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1039/D0CE00069H
Reversible two-step single-crystal to single-crystal phase transitions between desloratadine forms I, II and III: Srirambhatla Vijay K, Guo Rui, Dawson Daniel M, Price Sarah L, Florence Alastair J; Crystal Growth and Design Vol 20, pp. 1800-1810 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.cgd.9b01522
A micro-XRT image analysis and machine learning methodology for the characterisation of multi- particulate capsule formulations [Video Abstract]: Doerr Frederik JS, Florence Alastair J; (2020); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpx.2020.100041
A micro-XRT image analysis and machine learning methodology for the characterisation of multi- particulate capsule formulations: Doerr Frederik JS, Florence Alastair J; International Journal of Pharmaceutics: X Vol 2 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpx.2020.100041

more publications

Professional activities

Continuous Crystallisation: Linking API & Drug Product: Speaker; 27/8/2020
Flow Chemistry Europe 2020: Speaker; 3/3/2020
Nextrode Full Consortium Meeting: Speaker; 28/2/2020
Britest Process Understanding Day: Speaker; 22/1/2020
Town Hall Meeting - Manufacturing the Future utilising the UK’s Large Facilities: Speaker; 21/1/2020
Gordon Research Conference on Crystal Growth and Assembly: Invited speaker; 23/6/2019

more professional activities

Projects

Digital Design Accelerator Platform to Connect Active Material Design to Product Performance (Manufacturing Made Smarter): Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator) Johnston, Blair (Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2020 - 28-Jan-2022
Doctoral Training Partnership 2018-19 University of Strathclyde | Pereira Diaz, Laura: Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator) Johnston, Blair (Co-investigator) Pereira Diaz, Laura (Research Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2019 - 01-Jan-2023
NF204: Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator); 23-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2019
measure X-PDF data and use PDF modelling and calculations to gain understanding of amorphous materials _ student placement: Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator); 02-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2020
Master Development Manufacturing Services Agreement CMAC National Facility NF179: Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator) Price, Chris John (Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2019 - 30-Jan-2019
Pressure-dependent In-Situ Monitoring of Granular Materials: Florence, Alastair (Principal Investigator) Halbert, Gavin (Co-investigator) Markl, Daniel (Co-investigator) McArthur, Stephen (Co-investigator) Nordon, Alison (Co-investigator) Oswald, Iain (Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2022

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Address

Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
Technology Innovation Centre

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