Converting to Continuous Manufacturing with CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals at CPHI Barcelona

Throughout many industries, continuous manufacturing has proven to be advantageous when compared with traditional batch processing, providing a faster, cheaper, and more flexible option. Within the pharmaceutical industry, there has been some adoption of continuous manufacturing processes; however, a fully end-to-end continuous pharmaceutical process is still challenging (1).

For CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals—a spin out company from a multi-year collaboration between MIT and Novartis—producing drugs effectively and at a lower cost has been the primary mission. To learn more about the company and how it is enabling end-to-end continuous manufacturing, Pharmaceutical Technology Europe^® spoke with the company’s senior marketing manager, Leonardo Vincenzi, at CPHI Barcelona 2023.

Converting from batch to continuous

"We specialize in process development,” explained Vincenzi. “We have developed, over the years, a plethora of enabling technologies to allow the continuous manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.”

Generally dealing with large pharmaceutical companies, Vincenzi pointed out that CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals provides process development technology that allows their customers to convert their batch manufacturing systems into continuous ones.

Responding to the pandemic

Recently, CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals has worked with the United States government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to aid in the manufacture of some of the drugs that were in shortage, Vincenzi revealed.

“One of the class of drugs that were challenging for us and pushed us to develop new technologies were high-potency products and controlled substances,” Vincenzi said. “Therefore, we developed new technology and new labs for us to work on these kinds of products.”

A unique offering

For Vincenzi, the key differentiating factor for CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals is the fact that they are offering an end-to-end solution, something that he hasn’t seen anywhere else. “We go from the raw material to your preferred drug product, all the way through your reaction, filtration, drying steps to the final tableting or vial filling,” he remarked.

Reference

1. Domokos, A.; Nagy, B; Szilágyi, B.; Marosi, G.; Nagy, Z.K. Integrated Continuous Pharmaceutical Technologies—A Review. Org. Process Res. Dev. 2021,25 (4), 721–739.

CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals was featured at the inaugural Start-Up Market on the show floor at CPHI Barcelona 2023. CPHI Barcelona ran from Oct. 24–26, 2023.