ISPE Announces Facility of the Year Awards Category Winners

The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) announced the 2018 Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) Category Winners at its 2018 Europe Annual Conference in Rome, Italy on March 20, 2018. The award-winning projects selected by the FOYA program set the standard for pharmaceutical facilities of the future by demonstrating excellence in facility design, construction, and operations.

“Each of our 2018 Category Winners exemplify the core mission of the FOYA program-to create high-quality medicines for all global patients,” said John Bournas, ISPE CEO and president, in a press release. “Their use of cutting-edge engineering and innovative new technologies contributes to the advancement of our industry and, most importantly, to improving people’s lives.”

BioMarin Pharmaceutical won the Project Execution Category Award for its Project FAITH, which transformed a basic infrastructure in Novato, CA into one of the first gene manufacturing facilities of its kind in the world, in just 14 months. Keys to the speed of this project included phased design methodologies, concurrent scale-up at other facilities, concurrent staff resourcing and training, and intensive schedule control.

Shire won the Facility Integration Category Award for its construction of a new 120,000-ft² purification facility (Building 8) in Los Angeles, CA. The location permitted the downstream purification process to be maintained with the upstream steps of plasma fractionation. The application of innovative design practices led to the successful integration of the new facility into an existing operational campus.

The Operational Excellence Category was awarded to Shire’s Quality Control Laboratory in Los Angeles, CA. This project addressed the development and operationalization of a next-generation quality control lab to meet the increasing global demand for plasma-derived therapies. 

Vetter Pharma-Fertigung GmbH & Co.KG won the Facility of the Future Category Award for its project to optimize pharmaceutical processes at its Center for Visual Inspection and Logistics in Ravensburg, Germany. The facility features unique, innovative solutions, including flexible options for using space and expanding the site to fit customer needs.

The Sustainability Category was awarded to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Co, a Pfizer Company, for its Pfizer Consumer Health manufacturing facility in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. Project Diamond created a facility that embraces a holistic approach to sustainability, beyond application of good engineering practices.

Emergent BioSolutions received an Honorable Mention for the expansion of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) in Baltimore, MD. Emergent’s CIADM facility is one of three facilities in the United States developed with the primary purpose of providing rapidly deployed development and manufacturing capabilities in response to a global pandemic.

An Honorable Mention was also given to the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) for its success in applying quality-by-design principles and international best practices to manufacture affordable HIV medicines in the Rangsit Pharmaceutical Production Plant 1 in Pathumthani, Thailand.

Source: ISPE