Author Archives: Cheryl Scott

eBook: Antibody–Drug Conjugates —
A New Generation of Approaches Is Changing the Game

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Combining large proteins with linkers and cytotoxins, antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) may be the most complex drug molecules in development today. Despite early promise and product approvals, a number of technical concerns arose during product and process development. Characterizing and ensuring consistency in the number of small molecules that attach to the antibody — as well as ensuring their proper attachment and biophysics — all present significant challenges to ADC developers. Solving early problems associated with product quality has introduced a…

January 26, 2022

Tris, a Critical Raw Material: Improving the Quality and Consistency of Supply

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ANGUS Life Sciences is the world’s largest supplier of tromethamine buffers and the only manufacturer of the tris molecule based in the Western hemisphere. The company sells directly to biopharmaceutical customers and contract manufacturing organizations as well as to reprocessors who repackage the chemical or process it into different grades and derivatives. After recent expansions in both the United States and Germany, the company now boasts dual-source manufacturing capabilities for its highest-purity tris products and is confident about its ability…

December 21, 2021

eBook: Diagnostics — Developing Rapid and Accessible Testing Solutions

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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought myriad economic disruptions, social complications, and public-health calamities to the world. They have understandably overshadowed the silver lining of boosting biomedical science and technology in the realms of infectious disease, oncology, and more. But alongside the much-publicized commercial debut of novel vaccine technologies have come promising advances in medical diagnostics. In this eBook, BPI’s senior technical editor brings together perspectives from industry, academia, and expert organizations to highlight some of the latest diagnostic methods and…

December 16, 2021

November/December 2021: From the Editor

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One silver lining to the cloud of meeting only virtually has been our ability to “attend” some conferences to which we’ve not made it very often in the past. For example, I enjoyed tuning into the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE) 30th Annual Aseptic Processing Conference, which was held virtually this past spring. It helped me plan for our September featured report, and it provided a good general update on the current state of biopharmaceutical formulation, fill and finish.…

December 8, 2021

Viral Safety of Viral Vectors:
Special Concerns Arise When the Virus Is the Product

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As anyone who has focused on host-cell proteins as process contaminants can tell you, trying to purify a specific type of molecule from a large mixture of many similar molecules is like trying to find a few particular needles in a huge pile of varied needles. The same could be said for purifying viral vectors from cell culture fluids. When viruses are the products, unwanted viruses are contaminants that must be separated away — or better yet, prevented from being…

October 29, 2021

eBook: Rare Diseases — Biopharmaceutical Challenges Presented By Relatively Small Patient Populations

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By definition, an orphan disease affects a small percentage of the population. However, with some 7,000 such conditions identified so far, they collectively have a significant impact on global health. An estimated 350 million people are affected worldwide by a rare disease — altogether more than the population of the world’s third largest country (the United States). Some well-known biopharmaceutical companies are devoted to developing treatments for rare diseases. However, the vast majority of such diseases have no treatments approved by…

October 12, 2021

Toward the Point of Care: Flexibility and Decentralization Are Key to Making Autologous Therapies More Readily Available

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Part of the advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) class of therapeutics, cell and gene therapies (CGTs) can be either autologous, using the patient’s own cells, or allogeneic, using master banked donor cells. Global biotechnology company Orgenesis focuses on autologous therapies, with processes and systems developed for closed and automated processing that have been validated for regulatory-compliant production at the point of care for patient treatment. This technology could help overcome the limitations of traditionally cost-prohibitive CGT manufacturing methods that do…

June 18, 2021

Avenues for Innovation: The Latest in Cell-Line Engineering and Development

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Plato wrote in ancient Greece that “our need will be the real creator,” which transformed over time into the English proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Advancements in medicine and biomanufacturing technology in 2020 have epitomized that idea. Even as technologies such as mRNA vaccines have rocketed into the public’s awareness, biomanufacturing experts have worked behind the scenes with renewed vigor spurred on by hard lessons from the pandemic. Cell-line development and engineering are no exception. Already undergoing a…

May 24, 2021

Increasing Expression Titers: New Technologies Could Help Other Cell Lines Catch Up to CHO

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Fang Tian is a lead scientist and head of cell biology research and development at the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) in Manassas, VA. She is a member of both the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC) and the US technical advisory group for the ISO/TC276 technical committee. At ATCC, she oversees preparation, authentication, characterization, quality control, and cryopreservation of more than 3,400 accessioned animal cell lines and hybridomas in the cell biology general collection. She holds a PhD in…

May 24, 2021

Engineering Alternatives: Modern Technology Enables Expression System Developers to Think Beyond CHO Cells

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Major biopharmaceutical companies are teaming up with academics and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop new biomanufacturing cell lines and methods. The project — known as the AltHost Consortium — is exploring innovative ways to produce biologics and vaccines for clinical usage in diseases from diabetes to cancer. Lead researcher J. Christopher Love at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) likens this precompetitive, open-access collaboration to the early days of the biopharmaceutical industry. “When biomanufacturing first emerged as…

May 24, 2021