Pharmaceutical

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in one or more of the following: (1) manufacturing biological and medicinal products; (2) processing (i.e., grading, grinding, and milling) botanical drugs and herbs; (3) isolating active medicinal principals from botanical drugs and herbs; and (4) manufacturing pharmaceutical products intended for internal and external consumption in such forms as ampoules, tablets, capsules, vials, ointments, powders, solutions, and suspensions.

Recent Posts

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Digital Twins and AI Reshape Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Gareth John Macdonald

🔖 Topics: Digital Twin

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Sanofi


The foundation of any control strategy is process understanding. And, according to the ICH’s Q8 guidance,1 modeling is the best way to generate process understanding and meet regulators’ quality-by-design expectations. The models should describe the relationship between process parameters and drug quality and performance attributes.

Statistical models—predictions based on available data—have proven to be the most popular approach so far. Many manufacturers have used data-based models to guide development, scale-up, and process control. But their predictive power is limited to the range of data available, and they require significant experimental effort.

For this reason, mechanistic models—assumptions based on known principles rather than just data—are gaining in popularity. Mechanistic models “can provide a full description of the system, higher prediction power, as well as the potential to extrapolate well outside of calibration space,” Li explains. “They are valuable tools for predicting scale-up process performance, thereby de-risking large-scale manufacturing runs.”

Read more at GenEng News

Pharma 4.0™ Demystified: Navigating Improvement Opportunities with Solutions from Grantek

Mexican manufacturing: so far from EU, so close to US

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🔖 Topics: Reshoring

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical


Kearney’s US Reshoring Index (April 2021) shows that many US manufacturing executives perceive nearshoring to Mexico or Canada as even more advantageous than reshoring to the US. The index also noted that US manufacturers will specifically strive to reduce dependence on China for manufacturing, another positive sign for nearshoring operations to Mexico. Since 2020, Covid-19 related supply chain disruptions have caused many US companies to take steps to bring some of their manufacturing closer to home.

The US pharma market is the largest worldwide. There is a great incentive for North American countries to trade with each other (and promote nearshoring, given lower overhead costs) since the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a free trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the US, came into force in July 2020. At the same time, the US has had trade disputes with a major pharma exporter, China, in recent years. Many of the world’s largest pharma companies already operate facilities in Mexico, and nearshoring could increase international investment further.

Read more at Pharmaceutical Technology

Merck Teams Up With Rival J&J to Help Produce Its Covid Vaccine

Blockchain and the Pharmaceutical Industry

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Georgia Wilson

🔖 Topics: blockchain

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Avanir Pharmaceuticals


“Blockchain can help ensure that there is reliable, accurate data and a single reliable version of the truth that is shared by every participant in the pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain. It can increase end-to-end visibility of the supply chain with data. Blockchain can bridge barriers between stakeholders by giving all parties the same, real-time, accurate view of the supply chain. This is an important factor for ensuring manufacturing and supply chain robustness,” says Arul Joseph, Senior Director, Pharmaceutical Development and Clinical Supply Chain, Avanir Pharmaceuticals.

Read more at Manufacturing Global

Pharma Sets a Foundation for Greener API Manufacturing

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Cynthia A. Challener

🔖 Topics: sustainability, continuous-flow manufacturing

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Boehringer Ingelheim, W R Grace and Company, Double Rainbow Biosciences


To contribute to the reduction of CO2 and GHG emissions, all drug developers and manufacturers need to seriously consider measures to improve sustainability throughout each phase of their industrial processes, according to Weng. “The pharmaceutical industry is due for a major overhaul in all aspects of its unit operations. Essentially, the pharmaceutical industry should be evaluating sustainable alternatives for all current exercises that rely on fossil fuel inputs,” he sates.

The best time to consider optimal, sustainable production solutions is during the design of the synthetic route to an intermediate/API, notes Martin, because once these processes are validated, it is very challenging to introduce any changes, even if they offer significant improvements in productivity and sustainability.

Read more at Pharmaceutical Technology

Pfizer’s Edge in the COVID-19 Vaccine Race: Data Science

📅 Date:

🔖 Topics: COVID-19

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Pfizer


Pfizer dominated news headlines and family dinner conversations last December when it became the first company to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. market. The pharma giant accomplished the feat in record time: less than a year after the disease was first identified.

Integral to that effort was the work of Pfizer’s informatics and digital technology team for its vaccine R&D business. Led by Frank DePierro, this group of researchers crunched and chronicled all of the clinical trial data that led to a green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and a safeguard for millions of people.

Read more at IEEE Spectrum

Are my (bio)pharmaceutical assay performances reliable? Only probability of success counts!

📅 Date:

✍️ Authors: Thomas de Marchin, Laurent Natalis, Tatsiana Khamiakova, Eric Rozet, Hans Coppenolle

🔖 Topics: continued process verification

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Pharmalex, Janssen


Gage R&R studies are often conducted in the industry to determine the operating performance of a measurement system and determine if it is capable to monitor a manufacturing process. Several metrics are commonly associated with Gage R&R studies, such as the precision-to-tolerance ratio (P/T), the precision-to-total-variation ratio (%RR), the Signal to noise ratio (SNR), the %Reproducibility and the %Repeatability. While these metrics may suit well the overall industry, they could be problematic once applied in drug manufacturing sector for several reasons, (1) (bio)pharmaceutical assays are often more variable than common physico-chemical measurement systems and the usual criteria are too restrictive for the pharma industry, (2) analytical methods cannot always be improved once qualified, and (3) measurements are usually costly and time consuming, which makes difficult to have enough data to estimate all sources of variance with high precision.

Read more at Towards Data Science

Assisting Continued Process Verification with AI

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Chris Lee

🔖 Topics: continued process verification

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Falkonry


Patterns of behavior reflected in the data from equipment sensors can give insight into these performance affecting factors. In many cases, these patterns develop before product quality is significantly affected. Putting in place analytics that can detect these patterns gives the plant operations team actionable warning before CPV limits indicate a problem. This warning can be used to limit costly production impacts. Importantly, because the CPV process itself is untouched, these kinds of pattern detection analytics can be implemented without additional filings or regulatory delay. Assisting CPV does not mean replacing or even changing CPV.

Read more at Falkonry Blog

How and Why Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Are Applying Artificial Intelligence

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: David Greenfield

🔖 Topics: quality assurance, predictive maintenance

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: AspenTech


“Opportunities to reduce manufacturing costs exist across all stages of the product lifecycle. Advanced analytics can reveal those opportunities, allowing pharma companies to take informed action to save money,” said Richard Porter, global director, pharmaceuticals, at AspenTech. “Whether using multivariate analytics to identify process degradation and its impact on quality or predicting final product quality to reduce lab testing lag times, these techniques offer pharmaceutical companies a competitive advantage.”

A purified water system at a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.“The company tried to avoid batch losses—with each batch valued between $250,000-$300,000—as frequent shutdowns to replace the seals limited capacity,” said Porter. “As the company needed to ramp up capacity, it purchased two additional mills. Adopting Aspen Mtell, which connects to OPC UA supported devices, for predictive maintenance allowed the company to reduce supply chain disruptions from seal replacements and cut lifecycle maintenance costs by 60%. In addition, the company reduced capital expenditures and associated lifecycle maintenance costs by 50%.”

Read more at Automation World

Vaccine production: Marburg has the right stuff

📅 Date:

🔖 Topics: manufacturing execution system

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Siemens, BioNTech


BioNTech manufactures BNT162b2 in collaboration with US pharmaceutical specialist Pfizer. The company has started manufacturing at the production site in Marburg, in the German state of Hesse. The plant there comes with an ultramodern production facility for recombinant proteins. The relevant expertise is also available, since BioNTech also acquired a highly qualified employee base along with the production facility, all of whom are experienced in developing new technologies.

The facility in Marburg had been producing influenza vaccines based on flu cell culture, then changed over to recombinant proteins for cancer treatments and now manufactures mRNA vaccine.

All the improvements at the Marburg plant are Industry 4.0-compatible. One of the challenges with the conversion was the fact that it involved switching from rigid to mobile production with many single-use components. At the same time, working with mRNA meant a higher clean room class than was previously required in the facility. Paper is now an avoidable “contamination factor” that doesn’t arise with digital production. That was the basis for opting for the Opcenter Execution Pharma solution from Siemens as the new MES. This solution enables complete paperless manufacturing and fully electronic batch recording.

Read more at Siemens Blog

How Pfizer Makes Its Covid-19 Vaccine

📅 Date:

✍️ Authors: Emma Cott, Elliot deBruyn, Jonathan Corum

🔖 Topics: COVID-19

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Pfizer, BioNTech


“This is where the magic happens.”– Patrick McEvoysenior director of operations and engineering

A rack of 16 pumps precisely controls the flow of the mRNA and lipid solutions, then mixes them together to create lipid nanoparticles.

When the lipids come into contact with the naked strands of mRNA, electric charge pulls them together in a nanosecond. The mRNA is enveloped in several layers of lipids, forming an oily, protective vaccine particle.

Synchronizing eight pairs of pumps is not an ideal solution, but Pfizer engineers chose to scale up existing technology instead of trying to build a larger, unproven type of precision mixing device.

The newly made vaccine is filtered to remove the ethanol, concentrated and filtered again to remove any impurities, and finally sterilized.

Read more at New York Times (Paid)

Why We Can't Make Vaccine Doses Any Faster

📅 Date:

✍️ Authors: Isaac Arnsdorf, Ryan Gabrielson

🔖 Topics: COVID-19

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Snapdragon Chemistry


The Trump administration deployed the Defense Production Act last year to give vaccine manufacturers priority in accessing crucial production supplies before anyone else could buy them. And the Biden administration used it to help Pfizer obtain specialized needles that can squeeze a sixth dose from the company’s vials, as well as for two critical manufacturing components: filling pumps and tangential flow filtration units. The pumps help supply the lipid nanoparticles that hold and protect the mRNA — the vaccines’ active ingredient, so to speak — and also fill vials with finished vaccine. The filtration units remove unneeded solutions and other materials used in the manufacturing process.

These highly precise pieces of equipment are not typically available on demand, said Matthew Johnson, senior director of product management at Duke University’s Human Vaccine Institute, who works on developing mRNA vaccines, but not for COVID-19. “Right now, there is so much growth in biopharmaceuticals, plus the pinch of the pandemic,” he said. “Many equipment suppliers are sold out of production, and even products scheduled to be made, in some cases, sold out for a year or so looking forward.”

Read more at ProPublica

Inside one of the new, quick-build factories making the Moderna vaccine

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Adele Peters

🔖 Topics: COVID-19

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: Moderna


The race to produce as much of the new vaccine as possible goes through these factories, which were spun up much faster than usual by building the shells before the vaccine production process was finalized.

Read more at Fast Company

The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: @damiangarde

🔖 Topics: COVID-19, mRNA

🏭 Vertical: Pharmaceutical

🏢 Organizations: BioNTech, Moderna, Pfizer


The liquid that many hope could help end the Covid-19 pandemic is stored in a nondescript metal tank in a manufacturing complex owned by Pfizer, one of the world’s biggest drug companies. There is nothing remarkable about the container, which could fit in a walk-in closet, except that its contents could end up in the world’s first authorized Covid-19 vaccine.

Pfizer, a 171-year-old Fortune 500 powerhouse, has made a billion-dollar bet on that dream. So has a brash, young rival just 23 miles away in Cambridge, Mass. Moderna, a 10-year-old biotech company with billions in market valuation but no approved products, is racing forward with a vaccine of its own. Its new sprawling drug-making facility nearby is hiring workers at a fast clip in the hopes of making history — and a lot of money.

Read more at StatNews