As the adoption of single-use systems continues to expand beyond bags and tubing to complete process steps, a full range of sensing technologies will be needed to complement the resulting varied single-use applications. Single-use sensors must meet or exceed the performance of traditional sensing technologies in areas such as accuracy, response time, ease of use, control system integration, process compatibility, regulatory requirements, and cost. Single-use flow-through process sensors are currently available for pressure, temperature, flow, and conductivity. Here, we report…
Downstream Development
Managing Cost Without Sacrificing Quality
Over the past decade, significant pressures have threatened the future of many pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. Increasing drug development costs, declining research and development (R&D) productivity, mounting regulatory setbacks, and looming patent expirations — with fewer blockbuster therapies on the horizon — are collectively challenging many businesses to stay profitable and competitive within the industry. Many companies are intensifying their focus on reducing operating costs, particularly within manufacturing operations. This trend is almost an omnipresent feature of management…
Developing an Integrated Continuous Bioprocessing Platform
Continuous upstream processing (perfusion) is not a new concept in the bioprocessing industry. Genzyme, Bayer, Centocor, and other companies have been implementing perfusion processes for many years. However, interest is now growing for extending this concept to downstream operations to create fully integrated continuous processing. During the past year, Genzyme has presented on and published about its advancement toward the development of an integrated continuous system (1). The company has completed proof-of-principle development at laboratory scale with different…
Polysorbates, Immunogenicity, and the Totality of the Evidence
Protein aggregation underlies many deleterious effects for biotherapeutics. Principal among those are loss of efficacy, induction of unwanted immunogenicity, altered pharmacokinetics, and reduced shelf life. Consequently, aggregation-preventing surfactants are essential components of many protein formulations. They facilitate the development, manufacture, and stability of dosage forms by helping formulators manage protein aggregation and reduce interactions with container and delivery device surfaces. Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) present difficulties with respect to aggregation because they usually require relatively high doses for therapeutic…
QbD for Biologics: Learning from the Product Development and Realization (A-MAb) Case Study and the FDA OBP Pilot Program
Cosponsored by CASSS (an international separation society) and the FDA, the 23rd CMC Strategy Forum was held in Bethesda, MD, on 19–20 July 2010. For the third time, this forum explored the topic of quality by design (QbD) for biologics. The first such forum was held in July 2007 and focused on establishing a general understanding of QbD terminology and concepts. In July 2008, the second discussed approaches for submission of QbD data and associated regulatory implications. Building…
A Decade of Production
Single-use technology has arguably been the biggest “story” of the past 10 years in bioprocessing. And for many people, implementation of disposable elements began soon after the turn of the century with a bioreactor (1, 2), first developed by Wave Biotech in 1996, now a mainstay of many upstream process development laboratories and sold by GE Healthcare. BPI identified the significance of such technologies early on, making them the subject of a supplement in its second year. By the fourth…
A Decade of Processing
About halfway through our first decade in publication, we became well acquainted with a new buzzword phrase in the biopharmaceutical industry: downstream bottleneck (1). This followed on the heels of a manufacturing capacity crunch that had been forecast shortly before BPI made its debut. Thanks to herculean efforts by upstream process and cell-line engineers, that crunch didn’t pan out. In its place, however, high-titer production moved the pressure downstream. Now separation and purification engineers were tasked with handling…
A Decade of Harvesting Methods
The preliminary separation of a protein of interest from a reactor “soup” of process impurities (e.g., cell debris, colloids, lipids) is the first step in a downstream process. It is also a primary step that introduces a significant risk of product degradation, bioburden concerns, or process errors, especially if a harvest method is not a good “fit” with a newly designed bioreactor (e.g., single-use) or fermentation vessel. In 2003, BPI’s first year, industry concerns revolved around potential capacity…
A Decade of Process Development
Our “manufacturing ” theme could be considered a sort of catch-all, encompassing much of what BioProcess International covers. You could argue that “the whole development process” is all about manufacturing biotherapeutics. But we instead consider this “pillar” of bioprocessing to include everything that isn’t strictly “upstream” (production) or “downstream” (processing) of biomolecules. Facility and supply-chain isssues come into play here, as do formulation and fill–finish (and of course, outsourcing). We discuss quality systems and their associated analytics in…
A Decade of Product Development
In 2004, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) transferred regulation of many highly purified, “well-characterized” biopharmaceutical proteins from the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), which until then had primarily regulated only synthetic, small-molecule drugs and chemical substances. The most novel/complex and the less-characterized biologics remained within CBER’s jurisdiction. This change complicated BPI’s mission somewhat. When the magazine was founded, we responded to questions from advertisers…