This is a transcript from a Q&A interview with Emily Shacter, PhD, Consultant, ThinkFDA LLC (former FDA Scientist and Regulator). We will be talking today about the CMC Forum that was published back in 2005. We are revisiting it in the magazine to specifically update our understanding of how to maintain process control; understanding your process. In general, how do you feel the discussions in the four-part paper from 2005 has held up after 10 years? Emily: I think they…
Introduction by Cheryl Scott The CMC Strategy Forums focus on relevant chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) issues throughout the life cycle of a therapeutic and thereby foster collaborative technical and regulatory interaction. Forum chairs share information with regulatory agencies to help them merge good scientific and regulatory practices. Outcomes of forum meetings are published in BioProcess International and on the CASSS website (www.casss.org). This process is meant to help ensure that biopharmaceutical products manufactured with advancing technologies in a regulated…
The CMC Strategy Forums focus on relevant chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) issues throughout the life cycle of a therapeutic and thereby foster collaborative technical and regulatory interaction. Forum chairs share information with regulatory agencies to help them merge good scientific and regulatory practices. Outcomes of the forum meetings are published in BioProcess International and on the CASSS website (www.casss.org). This process is meant to help ensure that biopharmaceutical products manufactured with advancing technologies in a regulated environment will continue…
Cosponsored by CASSS (an International Separation Science Society) and the US FDA, the 17th CMC Strategy Forum was designed to explore the relationships between higher-order molecular structure and quality of therapeutic proteins and peptides, vaccines, and blood-derived products. Understanding those relationships is important to defining and controlling the critical quality attributes (CQAs) of biopharmaceutical products. The forum program highlighted the current state of the art for analytical tools used to monitor higher-order structure. Case studies demonstrating the effects of changes…
Challenges and approaches in demonstrating comparability of a well-characterized biotechnology product after manufacturing changes can be as varied and complex as the products themselves. Participants at the January 2005 CMC Strategy Forum sought to discuss and agree on common implementation strategies for different manufacturing change scenarios (1). Development of flexible, comprehensive approaches in strategy development addressed evaluation of critical product characteristics, appropriate process steps to test, numbers of lots and levels of testing required, and assessment of product comparability. The…
A January 2007 CMC Strategy Forum on the roles of bioactivity assays in lot release and stability testing was held in Washington, DC (1). Its purpose was to promote an understanding of the design and utility of bioassays throughout product development and to delineate the conditions under which surrogate assays could be used to determine product potency. Topics of discussion included appropriate assay selection at each stage of product development, the potential use of binding assays for potency testing, and…
The CMC Strategy Forums provide a venue for biopharmaceutical product discussion. They focus on relevant chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) issues throughout the life cycle of a therapeutic and thereby foster collaborative technical and regulatory interaction. Forum chairs share information with regulatory agencies to help them merge good scientific and regulatory practices. Outcomes of the forum meetings are published in BioProcess International and on the CASSS website (www.casss.org). This process is meant to help ensure that biopharmaceutical products manufactured with…
Cosponsored by CASSS (an international separation science society) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the January 2010 CMC Strategy Forum explored antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs), which are monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) coupled to cytotoxic agents. The ADC platform of products is being used more and more for clinical evaluation in oncology. More than a dozen companies are developing several types, including products conjugated with calicheamicin, auristatins, and maytansinoids. Such products use the specificity of a MAb to deliver a cytotoxic…
A CMC Strategy Forum held in Washington, DC, on Sunday 28 January 2007 focused on two topics related to protein structure and function (1). First, analytical techniques used in the glycan analysis characterization included recent advances and correlations among the various tools. And second, current understanding of glycosylation’s functional relevance to therapeutic proteins was discussed in the context of its effects on biological activity, pharmacokinetics, and Fc effector functions (for monoclonal antibodies, MAbs). Progress has been made in the field…
On 6 January 2003, 129 attendees participated in the second Well-Characterized Biotechnology Product (WCBP) Chemistry and Manufacturing Controls (CMC) strategy forum, titled “Analysis and Structure Characterization of Monoclonal Antibodies (MAbs),†held in San Francisco to discuss lot release and characterization test issues specific to MAbs (1). The objective of the meeting was twofold: to identify a “core†set of assays most useful for lot-release testing of MAbs and to define a mechanism for selecting appropriate potency tests. Two separate workshops…