A Greater Need for Containment: Processing Equipment Trends

Over recent years, the bio/pharma industry has experienced a variety of trends, such as an increasing prevalence of more complex molecules in the development pipeline, smaller batch sizes being manufactured, and a greater need for containment, which have led to new approaches and technologies being explored for manufacturing and development. For processing equipment in particular, Christian Dunne, director of Global Corporate Business Development at ChargePoint Technology, believes that the increasing levels of containment have had the biggest impact.

“In part, [the changing levels of containment are] probably because of the better bioavailability of some of the drugs that are coming through, the doses seem to be a little bit smaller, and so we're getting much higher potency in what we're seeing in the industry than we used to many years ago,” Dunne says. It was more commonplace to see containment levels of one to 10 micrograms per cubic meter in the past, whereas now, more often than not, the industry is seeing less than a microgram and even into the nanogram levels of containment, he explains.

“Certainly, automation is very impactful on the industry at the moment, and that sort of rolls into robotics,” Dunne continued. Primarily, robotics were introduced into fill/finish operations, he notes, but now they are also being seen in oral solid dosage (OSD) technology as well, linking various (OSD) steps together.

Additionally, single-use technology is a key trend shaping processing equipment, Dunne specifies. “Obviously, you get a lot of flexibility with the single-use technology, and a lot of reduced risk in terms of the operator protection. But of course, it's got the added advantage of cost being a main driver for a lot of the companies like CMOs [contract manufacturing organizations].”

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About the speaker

Christian Dunne, director of Global Corporate Business Development at ChargePoint Technology.

Christian Dunne is director of Global Corporate Business Development at ChargePoint Technology—a pharmaceutical containment and aseptic processing specialist company. Christian has worked in the bio/pharma industry for 20 years covering oral solid dosage manufacturing through to sterile processing and fill/finish manufacturing.