Anurag S. Rathore

This article presents some key differences between the US and European regulation of biosimilars, including naming conventions and pharmacovigilance of biosimilars, and the impact of biosimilars on commercialization and affordability of biotherapeutics.

In this paper, the authors review the various analytical methods that can enable use of PAT.

The author provides an overview of QbD implmentation for biopharmaceuticals.

References for the article published in the February issue of Pharmaceutical Technology Europe.

The number of biotechnology-based human therapeutic products in the late-stage pipeline along with the average cost to commercialize a biotech product has been steadily increasing with time. In addition, the biotech industry is facing unprecedented challenges of a sagging global economy and rising regulatory expectations. Companies have to continue to evolve their approaches to be more efficient with respect to time, resources and cost. This article describes some of the technologies that can help optimize time and cost of biopharmaecutical manufacturing.

Constraints associated with equipment can make scale-down a challenging exercise.

Creation and qualification of scale-down models are essential for performing several critical activities that support process validation and commercial manufacturing. As shown in Figure 1, these activities include process characterization and production support studies that are performed to evaluate column and membrane lifetimes, demonstrate clearance of host-cell impurities and viruses and troubleshoot manufacturing issues. While the underlying fundamentals are relatively the same as those when scaling up, some unique considerations should be taken when scaling unit operations down.4

In this article, five industry experts share their insights to ensure that your column qualification protocols can survive the increased scrutiny of FDA inspectors.