Membrane adsorbers (MAs) are the fastest-growing segment in single-use bioprocessing. But their future is not entirely certain. According to BioPlan Associates’ latest survey of biopharmaceutical manufacturing, the MA market has been growing at ~20% annually since 2006 (1). Paradoxically, however, the segment may not be a true “rising star.” Our study also shows that MAs remain among the least-often adopted devices among biomanufacturers. So the question of how and whether MA technology can revolutionize bioprocessing remains open. Market for Membrane…
Author Archives: Eric S. Langer
Keeping New Technologies Coming
The biomanufacturing industry is heavily invested in improvements in productivity and efficiency, and innovation is a critical component to ensuring gains in these areas. Yet that is not always the case. Suppliers and innovators in this market face greater challenges, and much longer product evaluation cycles than in other segments, for example the information technology or semiconductor industries. In the highly regulated biomanufacturing environment, changing any aspect of a process can potentially necessitate additional regulatory submissions to the US Food…
Sponsors Look to Asia for Potential Contract Partners
As the biopharmaceutical market continues its global expansion, biomanufacturers are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of outsourcing activities to international destinations. This year, China expanded its lead as the primary potential destination. This measure of interest shows how the country’s international outsourcing potential and global perception have changed over the past five years. It also suggests a greater international awareness of opportunities opening up in China for local production. Figure 1: () More than a quarter (26.2%) of the…
A Decade of Biomanufacturing
The biopharmaceutical industry is emerging from four years of economic challenge in a very healthy state. Process improvements over the past decade have played a major role in keeping the industry healthy. Earlier this decade, most companies were more concerned about quickly getting their drug products to market than about strategically controlling costs of operations. But according to my group’s recent study, this has changed in most areas of manufacturing. In fact, although this year companies reported overall…
Key Downstream Problems Decline While Industry Continues to Demand New Technologies
Downstream problems for biomanufacturers finally appear to be lessening. Over the past six years, demand for better purification has topped the list of biomanufacturing areas in need of improvement. This year, however, it appears that purification woes — though still a hot topic — are cooling off. After seven years of measuring the impact on capacity of specific biomanufacturing operations, preliminary data from BioPlan Associates’ ninth annual survey shows that activities associated with both optimizing internal downstream processes (DSPs) and…
Upstream Single-Use Bioprocessing Systems
Single-use bioprocessing equipment has become well-accepted technology in a relatively short time. Disposable devices and components have created market niches and new segments that continue to evolve. In this dynamic environment, it is difficult to measure acceptance or assess market growth. Here we project the world market for cell culture single-use systems (SUS) as well as problems affecting that market, including adoption for commercial manufacture. This is based on our 10-year analysis of the industry, with data from our eighth…
Trends in Perfusion Bioreactors
Single-use bioprocessing equipment has come to thoroughly dominate precommercial biopharmaceutical production in only a decade. Yet even with this breakthrough, performance and cost pressures on biopharmaceutical facilities continue to grow. Demands for greater productivity, more efficiency, and lower costs are resulting in an unrelenting push for upstream improvements. Some people in the industry are predicting that perfusion bioreactor technologies may be the next revolution in bioprocessing (1). Perfusion may possibly become a dominant single-use bioreactor technology, with fed-batch…
Limited Analytical Technologies Are Inhibiting Industry Growth
Progress in the development of bioprocessing-related assays and analytical instrumentation has not kept up with industry demands. The industry wants analytical technologies (especially for single use) to help improve productivity, optimize and monitor processes, provide real-time product quality control, and characterize biosimilars. These trends are reflected in our recent survey data. Over 30% of biopharmaceutical manufacturers and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) have expressed demands for improved assays and analytical equipment (1). BioPlan Associates’ eighth annual survey of biopharmaceutical…
China Ranked Top Potential Biopharma Outsourcing Destination
Until recently, China had not been considered a global contender for outsourced biopharmaceutical manufacturing. In fact, it’s been less than a decade since pharmaceutical contract manufacturing in China became legal (1). Yet, the industry now ranks China as the most likely biomanufacturing outsourcing location. According to our recently released study, 17% of the industry considers China as the top future offshore production destination (Figure 1). The BioPlan 2011 Eighth Annual Report and Survey of Biomanufacturing Capacity and Production shows China…
Productivity Bottlenecks Drive the Demand for Innovation
Spending is up, the global economy is slowly getting back on track, and the biopharmaceutical industry continues to roll along at double-digit growth. Productivity has been the primary industry focus over the past few years, and it remains a hot topic. Companies are aggressively going after the bottlenecks to their efficiency, and now they’re opening their wallets to fix what’s broken. One of the biggest productivity fixes today centers on improved single-use devices and systems. They top a…