Manufacturing

Emerging Markets: Current Insights into the State of Global Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing

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Opportunities for establishing strong biopharmaceutical capabilities are expanding across the globe. This e-book seeks to encapsulate the current state of emerging markets/countries, tracing key elements above and offering examples to show where (in the world) the biopharmaceutical industry is expanding and securing its footholds. Generally, to succeed in these markets, foreign companies must exercise efficient resource management and control, show creativity and receptiveness to cultural differences, develop new strategies, and manage expectations. Working with local partners can provide access to…

August 31, 2017

Regulation, Analytical, and Process Issues with Leachables: Toward Harmonization for Latin America with Europe and North America

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The pharmaceutical industry follows strict regulations regarding impurities, including process-related leachates. Plastic manufacturers use hydrophobic, nontoxic additives for manufacturing containers for use in the pharmaceutical and food industries. However, some issues about dealing with such impurities are not yet resolved. In developing countries, regulators are working on guidelines to help local companies ensure characterization of impurities. In this exclusive editorial eBook, authors from Mexico describe some issues related to plastic leachables in the context of ongoing efforts to harmonize regulations…

August 23, 2017

Panel Discussion: Emerging Biotherapies and Their Manufacturing Challenges

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At noon on Tuesday, 20 June 2017, BioProcess International presented a panel discussion as part of the “Emerging Therapies†session of its BPI Theater at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s annual convention in San Diego. Moderated by Patricia Seymour (senior consultant at BioProcess Technology Consultants), this panel comprised Holger Wesche (vice president of research at Harpoon Therapeutics), Richard Snyder (chief scientific officer of Brammer Bio), Marc Better (vice president of product sciences at Kite Pharma), and Paulo Carvalho (associate director of…

August 8, 2017

Continuous Processes: Disposables Enable the Integration of Upstream and Downstream Processing

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Despite decades of advancement in characterization analytics, biotherapeutics still are largely defined by the manufacturing processes used to make them. This linking of process to clinical results (and thus to commercial success) has made the biopharmaceutical industry somewhat risk-averse when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. That desire to “derisk†biomanufacturing through better process understanding — as well as the need to adapt to uncertainties in patient population size through process flexibility — in turn drives the need…

May 19, 2017

The Value of Single-Use and Other Flexible Technologies

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The biopharmaceutical industry is adding mammalian cell culture capacity at rates that we haven’t seen in over a decade. Over the past five years (2012–2016), we estimate that industry-wide capacity has increased from 3.4 ML to 4.0 ML, an increase of 18% (1). We estimate that industry-wide capacity will increase over the coming five years (2016–2020) to 5.7 ML, an increase of >40%. Clearly, this growth is a response to the continued increase in demand for biopharmaceutical products and to…

May 19, 2017

Difficult-to-Express Proteins: Resolving Bioprocessing Challenges with a Scalable Perfusion Bioreactor

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Recent advances in protein engineering have identified new classes of complex biotherapeutics that challenge existing manufacturing platforms. These products have unique cell culture requirements that make them difficult to manufacture cost effectively. Industry standard bioprocessing platforms include large-scale (1,000–5,000 L) batch and fed-batch stirred-tank bioreactors. Historically, the powerhouse molecule of the biologics industry has been human IgG, which necessitates those large-scale platforms. Difficult-to-express proteins and other new modalities (including precision medicine and orphan drugs) have increased pressure on manufacturers to…

May 19, 2017

Is Continuous Downstream Processing Becoming a Reality?

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Over the past 30 years, several biopharmaceuticals have been produced by continuous cell culture processes run in a chemostat or perfusion mode. In most cases, no alternative was available to produce certain unstable molecules (1). However, downstream processing is and has remained a step-by-step batch operation. Continuous processing generally requires more process knowledge, equipment, and technological advances than do batch processes. With the maturity of bioprocessing and increasing awareness of manufacturing costs, companies are focusing on developing continuous downstream processing…

May 19, 2017

An Industry Proposal for Change Notification Practices for Single-Use Biomanufacturing Systems

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Current practices for change notification in the biopharmaceutical industry are neither efficient nor conducive to accelerating the adoption of single-use systems (1, 2). Drug manufacturers (end users) often observe that supplier change data packages lack technical content or detail and that the time allowed for change implementation is too short. Occasionally, customers (end users or next tier in supply chain) learn of changes after the fact, possibly even by happenstance. Suppliers, however, can find the potential affect of a change…

May 18, 2017

Opportunities and Challenges in Biosimilar Development

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A biosimilar biotherapeutic product is similar (but not identical) in terms of quality, safety, and efficacy to an already licensed reference product. Unlike generic small molecules, it is difficult to standardize such inherently complex products based on complicated manufacturing processes. Table 1 describes the main differences between biosimilar and generic drug molecules. The global biosimilar market is growing rapidly as patents on blockbuster biologic drugs expire (Table 2) and other healthcare sectors focus on reduction of costs. Biologics are among…

May 18, 2017

Introduction: Tackling the Technical and Regulatory Challenges of Biosimilar Development

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In a just a few years, the biopharmaceutical industry has gone from questioning the feasibility of “follow-on biologics†(around the time of BPI’s first issues) to fearing them (when we published our first supplement on the topic in 2013) to the acceptance and strategizing of today. Perhaps because of its more socialized medicine, Europe led the way in biosimilar regulation and approved its first such product nearly 10 years before the first US biosimilar launch in 2015. In between came…

April 18, 2017