DDIC: Ground-breaking Ceremony for the DDIC Building Extension at Chempark Leverkusen

On Friday September 10th, a major milestone for INVITE and the Drug Delivery Innovation Center (DDIC) was celebrated. With the ground-breaking ceremony for the DDIC Building Extension-project, the construction of the new laboratory facilities at Chempark Leverkusen started.

DDIC: Ground-breaking Ceremony for the DDIC Building Extension at Chempark Leverkusen INVITE GmbH
DDIC: Ground-breaking Ceremony for the DDIC Building Extension at Chempark Leverkusen INVITE GmbH

Six speakers, Tonia Tonnes (project management), Werner Hoheisel (DDIC operations director), Gerhard Schembecker (DDIC representative from the universities), Olaf Queckenberg (representing the supervisory board), Armin Knors (representing the shareholder assembly), and Ildikó Terebesi (managing director of INVITE GmbH) underlined the importance of the building extension project. From different perspectives, they emphasized its importance for further strengthening and driving research and innovation in the areas of formulation technology and drug delivery within the DDIC. The new building will be integrated into the existing building of Invite GmbH and completed in early 2023. By then the new building will add 1200 m2 of laboratory and offices space. The construction project has a budget of approximately €6 million and is supported by the EFRE (Europäischer Fonds für regionale Entwicklung) program.

The DDIC was founded in 2017 by the companies Bayer AG, LB Bohle GmbH, Merck KGaA (all Germany) and UCB S.A (Belgium), together with the university partners TU Dortmund and HHU Düsseldorf. INVITE GmbH is leading the consortium. The DDIC fosters international, multi-disciplinary networks in the research area of drug delivery and manufacturing, it promotes pharmaceutical science in close collaboration with academia and pharmaceutical industry along the value chain.