Wednesday, April 24, 2019 Daily Archives

Step-wise strategy to address process characterization and late phase development – toward the definition of a standardized approach

Drivers for process characterization and late phase development include improving process understanding, enhancing process robustness, and assurance that the process delivers consistent product quality within all Proven Acceptable Ranges (PARs). Regulator’s expectations for biologic submissions include the application of statistical methods to improve the confidence of the PARs and knowledge of the design space for a process. Different approaches have been reported for process characterization but contain common elements including risk assessment, scale-down model qualification, and statistical design of experiments.…

Gilead’s Kite building MD plant to support commercial CAR-Ts

A 20-acre site in Frederick, Maryland will support the production of Kite’s commercial CAR-T therapies, including Yescarta, from 2021. Kite, acquired by Gilead Sciences for US$11.9 billion in August 2017, is one of only two firms to so far see regulatory success for a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) joined Novartis’ Kymriah on the market after being approved in October 2017. To support Yescarta and its pipeline of CAR-T and T-cell therapies, the firm announced it is…

Waters: Strength in biopharma as it takes small molecule hit

Chromatography and measurement company Waters Corporation experienced a volatile Q1 but its biopharma business remains high, backed by significant investments in the space. For the first quarter 2019, Waters Corporation reported sales of $514 million (€458 million), a drop of 3% on the same period last year. Waters CEO Chris O’Connell attributed the unexpected fall in sales to “greater-than-expected macro impacts in China and Europe, as well as a slow release of budgets by key pharmaceutical and industrial customers,†but…

Emerson buys Bio-G, adding modeling and scheduling software

Analytics and modeling tools can help deliver more effective and safer therapies to patients says Emerson, fresh from its acquisition of Bioproduction Group (Bio-G). Terms of the acquisition have not been divulged, but technology and engineering company Emerson extends its life sciences technology portfolio through the addition of Bio-G. “Many of biopharma’s biggest companies use Bio-G’s modeling and scheduling software for de-bottlenecking and optimization, and many of these same companies trust Emerson expertise and software to control their production and…