The Making of Merlin: Interview with Elaine H. Stone

What attracted you to the opportunity to launch Merlin?  

When Merlin was launched in 2011, it was the first time since the 1990’s that contract testing became available for compaction science. This was because it was previously done in-house by larger pharmaceutical companies.

It was such an exciting opportunity for me. At the time I was a laboratory scientist with sound scientific knowledge, but I had limited managerial experience. I was initially responsible for all aspects of the business, but over the last 10 years as the business has grown, it’s been great to nurture a successful team. I have a fantastic team around me that support with testing, whilst spreading compaction science knowledge within the pharmaceutical industry, and any other related industries such as manufacturing and animal health.

What were you doing before you started working at Merlin?

My educational background started with a degree in Pharmacy. I then worked within formulation development at AstraZeneca for over 18 years, whilst completing an MPhil in Compaction Science.

It was then that I became interested in compaction simulators, and I looked after the AstraZeneca compaction simulator for quite a few years. When the Loughborough AstraZeneca site closed in 2011, Merlin’s sister company Phoenix Materials Testing founder Vicki Wilkes approached me to launch Merlin. She had identified a need to make compaction science available to everyone in the pharmaceutical industry, and any other related industries, including animal health and manufacturing.  

Collaboratively, we set up Merlin so that we could offer contract testing to small or large companies who did not have in-house access to a compaction simulator. A brand-new compaction simulator was designed and installed in a laboratory in Loughborough, and I was put in charge of running the machine.

What services did Merlin provide at the start?

Our original services reflected what was carried out at larger pharmaceutical companies in-house, including API and material characterisation and compaction simulation and formulation. However, our long-term aim was to offer access to that technology to smaller companies, or those who don’t have a compaction simulator or the in-house expertise and knowledge to perform required tests.

As Merlin grew, we added Punch Adhesion testing to our service portfolio, which helps customers to understand whether a tablet will stick to a punch in production. Our full list of services can be seen here.

What has been the most exciting part of your role over the past ten years?

It’s so rewarding when you feel like you’ve really helped someone, or you’ve given them insight into test results that have really made a difference in the development process, such as troubleshooting causes of equipment failure. This can be seen in our case study here.

Customers have come to us later in their development process for powder characterisation tests after they have experienced issues during development, and we’ve been able to predict their scale-up issues. They say the prediction is accurate and they wished they had come to us earlier because we could have solved and prevented some of the issues that occurred. This is exciting for us because we can prevent these issues from occurring in the future using test results, and our customers really appreciate our insight. 

At the end of the day our goal is to get medicines to people who need them. If we can help to speed the development process up or make it cheaper by reducing issues during development, the end-user gets the medicines faster, meaning we’ve done our job well. It’s so beneficial to mankind and I think that’s why most of us are in this business.

What are the core values of Merlin, and why are they important to you?

We’re not just a laboratory that produces numbers and test results, we use all of our years of expertise to act in partnership with our customers, to put their results into context so they understand the project implications. 

Not only do our customers get the data that they need, but they also get our expert opinions on what the data means for them. It is a personal service, and customers value the support we give.

Where is Merlin based now?

Merlin is now based in Brierley Hill, we decided to relocate from Loughborough to share our expertise with our sister company Phoenix Materials Testing. We’re much stronger together as a team, and there’s a big synergy in what we do as part of Rubery Owen’s Materials Testing Division.

What do the next ten years look like for Merlin?

Our long-term goal is to work with a larger variety of powders, for example those with stronger potency. This can be difficult to achieve whilst complying with modern health and safety rules, but we’re starting to put things into place to achieve this goal. We identified this goal as this service isn’t readily available in the marketplace yet.

In the future we will be able to test powders that are considered more hazardous, like for example category five compounds such as anti-cancer drugs. This will give us more flexibility to support a larger variety of customers in the future.