Manufacturing

BioProgress plc and Magenta Oral Dose Design, a business unit of FMC Corporation, have finalized restructuring agreements regarding the licensing of NRobe technology.

InformexUSA, San Francisco (Feb. 14)-NPIL Pharma unveiled a $100-million investment program in formulation development and manufacturing services.

InformexUSA, San Francisco (Feb. 14)-Almac Sciences plans to collaborate for cytotoxic fill-and-finish services with the Center for Pharmaceutical Science and Technology (CPST) at the University of Kentucky.

Washington, DC (Feb. 14)?A congressional team has reintroduced the ?Access to Life-Saving Medicine Act,? which establishes a process through which the US Food and Drug Administration can approve generic copies of biologic drugs.

Distribution and collaboration agreements in biopharmaceutical purification

Washington, DC (Feb. 7)-The Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA) submitted comments to the US Department of Homeland Security in response to proposed DHS regulations on chemical site security, asking DHS to take into consideration the unique nature of the specialty batch manufacturing sector.

Washington, DC (Jan. 26)-The US Department of Health and Human Services has granted targeted liability protections for manufacturers of a vaccine to prevent a pandemic of influenza A (H5N1).

New York, NY (Jan. 31)-Pfizer, Inc. scored a victory over Synthon IP in a patent infringement lawsuit over the manufacturing process for ?Norvasc? (amlodipine).

St. Louis, MO, (Feb. 8)-SAFC, the custom manufacturing and fine chemicals unit of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, is seeking to build a footprint in Asia, eying possible acquisitions in India and China.

Osaka, Japan (Feb. 2)-Tanabe Seiyaku Co. Ltd. and Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation agreed to merge, with the closing planned for merger scheduled to take effect Oct. 1, 2007.

"Quality by design" (QbD) and "quality risk management" at long last seem to be moving from the buzzword stage to becoming important influences on drug development and manufacturing. A series of quality standards issued by the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) is encouraging the adoption of common quality-based drug manufacturing approaches designed to reach the "desired state" of drug manufacturing (i.e., more efficient, agile, flexible operations that can reliably produce high-quality drug products with less regulatory oversight). These developments reflect increased pressure to make pharmaceutical manufacturing more efficient and less wasteful and to encourage regulators in all regions to focus on the most critical issues affecting product quality and patient safety.

The role of micro-biological testing in real-time release is too important to ignore.

The objectives of this study were to prepare and characterize inclusion complexes of lovastatin with hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HPβ-CD) and to study the effect of the complexes on the dissolution rate of lovastatin (LVS). The findings suggest that LVS's poor dissolution profile can be overcome by preparing its inclusion complex with HPβ-CD.

It's what's on the outside that counts, too.

For solid oral-dosage forms, water testing usually is performed to control the chemical, physical, or microbiological properties of the drug product. Measurements of total water as made with Karl Fischer (KF) techniques is not needed and water-activity often will provide a better correlation with changes in chemical, physical, or microbiological properties than KF techniques. In these cases, water activity testing can easily replace KF testing. Water-activity measurements are nondestructive, require little labor, and the equipment required is generally inexpensive. Only a few simple checks are needed to ensure the validity of measurements. Strategies for implementing water activity testing are described.

The same phenomena that create lightning and thunderstorms are around us every day, producing incredibly high voltages, which cause sparks and shocks. Static electricity is a mighty force. Each year excessive electrical charge build cause explosions in the grain industry.1 Look around any flammable storage area and you will see both grounding bars on the wall and cables, from the grounding bars connected to the drums of solvents. Take any material safety data sheet (MSDS) for a powder and look in section V; it highlights that any dry powder has the potential to attract and store a charge.

Over the past decade, disposable technologies have become a reality in biotech processes. The use of disposables in research and manufacturing allows high flexibility.

Brain and heart broth is still used in path labs, but, when it comes to biopharmaceutical manufacturing, cells are having to learn to do without animal components whenever possible.

Raman spectroscopy has become a commonly used technique for physicochemical analysis that possesses many advantages over other analytical techniques. It is a very attractive characterization tool, not least because it enables measurements in water. However, very few examples of its application in an aqueous environment exist in literature. This paper provides some recent applications of Raman spectroscopy in pharmaceutical material and process characterization when water is present.

Tokyo (Jan. 18)-Tanabe Seiyaku Co. Ltd. confirmed it has had discussions with Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation over a possible merger between the two companies, but that no definite decision has been made for such a deal.

London (Feb. 1)-AstraZeneca PLC unveiled a plan to improve asset utilization within its global supply chain that involves rationalizing production assets and cutting staff. The company made the announcement as part of its fourth quarter and full-year 2007 financial results.

Pfizer's restructuring plan provides yet another example of new supply-chain strategies by the pharmaceutical majors, which involve rationalization of manufacturing facilities and cost improvement. A review of these moves, an outlook for the pharmaceutical market in 2007, and analysis of US pharmaceutical production and trade.

Cardinal Health (www.cardinal.com) agreed to sell its contract services unit, Pharmaceutical Technologies and Services (PTS), to The Blackstone Group (New York, NY, www.blackstone.com) for roughly $3.3 billion in cash.

Dutch biotech company, Crucell N.V and technology partner DSM Biologics have signed a PER.C6 research licence agreement with AbGenomics Corporation based in Taiwan.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, Washington, DC) has awarded three vaccine makers a total of $132.5 million to advance their strategies for adjuvant-containing vaccines to combat the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. Under the contracts, each company will build capacity to produce either 150 million does of the vaccine or enough adjuvant for 150 million doses within six months after the onset of an influenza pandemic.