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The pharmaceuticals of the future depend on engineers

Medicine and medico technology
In my opinion, engineers will change the way we make pharmaceuticals—and DTU is to supply the graduates.

By Professor Thomas Lars Andresen, Head of Department, DTU Nanotech.

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most important in Denmark; in fact, it is the only one in Denmark where employment has risen steadily for several years. At global level, the industry has largely switched its focus from small molecules to complex biologics. What is more, we have witnessed the rise of increasingly advanced pharmaceuticals, such as products based on the patient’s own immune cells, which have been modified to kill cancer cells. It is eminently possible to envisage utilizing some of the new technologies that use immune cells to treat cancer in the context of autoimmune illnesses and diabetes. Treatment of this kind may become truly epoch-making—on a par with the discovery of penicillin.

However, pharmaceuticals of this type are so complex that identifying the pharmaceutical itself is only part of the challenge. The associated process development and production have become factors that may determine whether the pharmaceutical will actually come to benefit patients, given that the cost price may impose severe limits on its use.

Engineers are already playing a central and increasingly important role in the pharmaceutical industry, but in the immediate future, there is a good chance we can become absolutely crucial to the industry—and thus to Danish companies when they choose to compete with foreign players.

The industry is sure to experience a rapidly increasing need for an interdisciplinary approach, quantitative analysis methods, fast screening methods, improved process design, greater process precision, improved production, mathematical analyses, and much more besides—so there has never been a greater demand for employees with a solid grounding in engineering science.

This development opens up a wide vista of opportunities for us at DTU and our students.

I feel a sense of pride when I walk through the DTU campus and see the unique new Lige Science buildings. It is incredible to look at the infrastructure that has been created since I was a student here 15 years ago. Our researchers have a crucial role to play in ensuring that we make the best use of this infrastructure through increased cooperation across departmental boundaries, and it is our task to make current and potential students aware of the peerless competences they have the chance to acquire.

It is essential for Denmark that DTU take the lead as a development driver with the capacity to raise the development of new technologies and extraordinary study programmes to the highest level. In this way, we can supply companies with employees who have the attitude and academic competency that graduate engineers from DTU represent.

Fantastic opportunities lie ahead of us. We must want them, invest in them, and live up to our potential to make a huge difference for industry and society in general.