Manufacturing

Greater automation and the adoption of solid versus perforated pans are some recent advances.

The growing demand for targeted biopharmaceutical therapies is driving interest in modular production facilities that can be rapidly constructed while still minimizing risk and cost.

Dynamic testing and advances in shear testing provide better insight into powder physical properties and external variables that affect powder behavior.

Integrated serialization systems keep pace with industry demand.

Crushing, fracturing, and bending tests quantify hardness.

Making the effort to apply new methods to pharmaceutical processing will bring benefits.

New Center for Pharmaceutical Advancement and Training increases number of experts and available tools in Sub-Saharan countries.

Drug manufacturers today are increasingly challenged to find new, effective methods for the delivery of active pharmaceutical ingredients, and many are discovering that orally disintegrating technologies can help.

New platform technologies and polymer chemistries may facilitate self-administration, longer-term delivery, and targeted delivery of parenteral drugs.

Pfizer has launched a prescription-fulfillment website for Viagra tablets in an effort to combat the online sale of counterfeited medicine.

Podcast interview with Nick Johnson, Strategic Marketing Director for Modified Release Technologies at Catalent Pharma Solutions

Applications of ZFN technology in biopharmaceutical cell-line engineering.

While there are those who want combination products to be controlled by a centralized pharmaceutical-type approval system, the majority of the medical technology industry wants to retain a decentralized device-focused approach.

The rejection by India's Supreme Court on Novartis' Glivec/Gleevec (imatinib mesylate) and other recent case law raise important issues on patent strategies for solid forms.

The impact of new delivery technologies in designing peptide therapies.

Solid-state chemistry is an important part of drug development, and public research is advancing the field.

The author suggests co-opetition as a future model for collaboration in drug development.

Lyophilization technologies for controlled nucleation.

Cocrystals are used to improve the performance of APIs that have non-ideal physiochemical properties by cocrystallizing the API with a second compound that modulates the API to provide a way to improve a drug's bioavailability, stability, and processability.

New product reviews for May 2013, featuring automation, IT, and process control systems.

Drug companies team up with INTERPOL to keep counterfeit medicines off the Internet and out of the hands of patients.

Pharmaceutical Technology spoke with INTERPHEX 2013 conference-session presenters to gain insight on trends in facility and process design.

Optimized freeze-drying cycles can offer scientific and business advantages.

Loss-in-weight feeders provide high accuracy for batch or continuous processes.

The author provides a review of FDA's guidance document, Guidance for Industry: Q11 Development and Manufacture of Drug Substances, and its relation to the International Conference on Harmonization's Q11 document and its application to the industry.

High-temperature, short-time (HTST) pasteurization and ultra-high temperature (UHT) sterilization are potentially useful as part of the trend toward methods of continuous manufacturing of bio/pharmaceuticals.

Despite overall manufacturing rationalization in the pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical industry, the large pharmaceutical companies continue to invest in biologic-based manufacturing. The author provides an update in recent investment activity among the pharmaceutical majors in biologic-drug substance, vaccine, and parenteral drug manufacturing.

The authors describe a holistic and integrated approach to focus on the linkage of the prefilled syringe with the four phases of product design, development, operation, and control.

A control strategy can maintain a low level of particulates, and thereby a low bioburden, in cleanrooms

Researchers recently developed a drug-delivery system to mitigate problems associated with jet-injection drug delivery, and also improved on the design and operation of microscale actuators as a possible drug-delivery method.