With this issue, we bid a reluctant farewell to our managing editor as she retires. Cheryl and I have known her and appreciated her friendship for 26 years. Her accumulated knowledge of cell and gene therapy development and the ease with which she can interpret the nuances of automation, digitalization, and equations will be sorely missed. To honor her time with us, I asked her to share her perspectives below. Maribel — it has been a thorough joy to work…
Clinical trial inclusivity strengthens analyses, speeds trial completion and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals, and lowers administrative costs of clinical studies. However, a mounting body of evidence shows that eligibility criteria often limit enrollment inclusivity and compromise trial data. For example, a retrospective review of 302 drug submissions to the FDA examined the impact of insufficient data on drug approvals. Nearly 16% of the reviewed studies had insufficient data to determine safe dosages, and over 13% revealed inconsistent results…
The International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) released a long-awaited draft revision of its Q9 guidance on quality risk management (QRM) for public consultation in December 2021 (1). First published in 2005, ICH Q9 has been instrumental in highlighting the importance of QRM in both the small- and large-molecule pharmaceutical industries. It was the first comprehensive guidance to explain how QRM could be used to identify, assess, and control risks to drug-product quality…
A multidisciplinary area of research, synthetic biology involves the use of genetic engineering to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, with potential applications in industries such as healthcare, agriculture, energy, and environmental science. As early as the 1960s, researchers combined advanced techniques in precision genetic engineering with rational drug development and explored approaches in synthetic biology to support development of innovative drug products. Later research shed new light on how molecular networks regulate cellular function and how gene expression…
Evaluating compatibility of a drug substance with all surfaces that it might come into contact with during drug product manufacturing is essential to ensure product quality. Proteins can adsorb to contact surfaces, form aggregates, and desorb into a drug-substance solution. Proteins also can degrade in presence of leachables generated from contact surfaces during manufacturing. Containers and vessels used during manufacturing are single-use disposable components or metal tanks, primarily either 316L stainless steel (SS) or C-276 Hastelloy nickel-based alloy (HLY). Researchers…
Rigorous physicochemical and bioanalytical methods must be performed on biological products to ensure that they contain minimal levels of host cell proteins (HCPs) and other process-related impurities. In the first and second parts of our article, we surveyed literature about HCPs of concern, the mechanisms behind their immunogenicity, and ultimately, their consequences for patient safety. Herein, we highlight published case studies to explore difficulties with detecting, identifying, and quantifying such impurities. These examples demonstrate that much remains to be learned…
Since its inception four decades ago, cell-free synthesis (CFS) has been used to produce biomolecules such as RNA, DNA, peptides, and proteins (1). However, most of these applications have been in early stage research and small-scale proof-of-concept studies, with rare examples of large-scale production. The slow industrial uptake of CFS has been attributed to low productivity, which suggests an uneconomical path to large-scale manufacture. Typically, a CFS platform includes a genetic template (encoding the product of interest), chemical additives (nucleotides…
Cell therapies are promising new drug products that treat or cure diseases that, until the past decade, had no other treatment options. Several autologous cell therapies have been approved, and their efficacy has been proven, especially in immunooncology. However, autologous therapies can present some difficulties for both developers and patients (e.g., short timelines, point-of-care drug administration). Allogeneic cell therapies are not associated with those challenges. For example, patient access to an autologous treatment can take months, time that patients with…
PendoTECH tangential-flow filtration (TFF) process control systems have been widely adopted in the filtration community. The system’s features enable its implementation in multiple unit operations and biopharmaceutical processing applications, including ultrafiltration–diafiltration (UF–DF) of proteins, viruses, and compounds such as oligonucleotides and antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs). The control system can be used to develop process parameters for UF–DF processes that have different membrane formats (e.g., flat-sheet cassette and hollow fiber). TFF laboratory setups often are manual or semiautomated processes that use pumps,…
During a September 2022 webinar, Kyle Deluca (a senior scientist in engineering at Merck) highlighted bottlenecks in his group’s workflow for characterizing production of a pneumonia vaccine. In that process, purified components undergo chemical modification in a synthesis reactor, followed by buffer exchange, size-based separation, additional chemical modification, and final purification. Because the modification steps were time and labor intensive, Merck automated them. With support from Mettler Toledo, Deluca and Felix Milman (a specialist in engineering at Merck) described how…