News from Europe's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry coupled with upcoming events, and exclusive articles and interviews from industry experts. WEEKLY
Efficiency is more than just a buzzword in today's pharmaceutical industry; declining productivity and diminishing returns
on investment have made it an over-arching mindset that is critical to corporate survival. Low-tech strategies to maximize
efficiency may include streamlining existing protocols and relieving bottlenecks, but, undoubtedly, the most direct and effective
approach to improving process efficiency and overall productivity is to operate 'lean and mean' — to maximize time, labour
and resource utilization while simultaneously optimizing the speed and quality of data acquisition — ultimately moving projects
through the pipeline more quickly and with greater success. Employing miniaturization and automation solutions to replace
processes that consume substantial quantities of high-value resources and rely on labour-intensive manual operations will
not only improve the efficiency of critical steps along the drug discovery continuum, but also help increase overall productivity
by ensuring robust and reproducible operations.
Figure 1: Correlation between Biacore and Gyrolab results in lgG-containing harvest.
Miniaturization and automation technologies have particular advantages and applicability for assay development and high-throughput
assay performance. There are many benefits to being able to perform automated assays at the nanoliter scale; for example,
smaller volumes mean less sample is needed per assay, allowing companies to perform more assays and gain more information
from limited starting materials. This also reduces the amount of reagents and buffers required, translating to smaller quantities
of materials that companies have to purchase, dispose of and store. From an efficiency perspective, the most important aspects
of assay miniaturization are the reduced time for assay development and the shorter cycle times, enabling more timely decision-making
and helping companies move projects forward more rapidly (Figure 1).
Figure 2: High intra-run reproducibility.
Adding automation and robotics technology to miniaturized platforms further enhances the speed of processing and also introduces
other advantages. Automation eliminates the variation and risk of error associated with manual operations, thereby improving
data quality (Figure 2). Importantly, by standardizing operations and procedures, automation facilitates the transfer of processes
both within a drug discovery organization and between a company and its outsourcing partners. Validated assays performed on
readily available instrumentation are particularly attractive to the rapidly expanding CRO and CMO industry. Not only do contract
service providers place a premium on cost-effectiveness, efficiency and productivity, they also prefer technology solutions
that minimize manpower needs.
Downsizing immunoassays
On the go...
Biologicals, including protein-based therapeutics and, in particular, monoclonal antibodies, are enjoying a resurgence of
interest in the pharmaceutical industry, and this trend is likely to continue. Companies are under intense pressure to identify
promising protein therapeutics quickly, to fail unsafe or unsuitable drug candidates early on in the process, and to generate
as much information as possible regarding safety and efficacy during the discovery and preclinical stages of product development
before taking a drug candidate into the clinical phase. Coupled with these pressures is an industry-wide emphasis on cutting
costs, preserving limited resources and minimizing the numbers of animals required for preclinical testing. To meet this last
goal, efforts have focused on the development of innovative, high-throughput assays that generate data that can predict a
compound's metabolic, toxic and pharmacokinetic (PK) properties.
Quality Contract Manufacuturing for semi-solids and liquids
Achieve optimum FTIR performance, sensitivity, reliability and value with Shimadzu spectrometers.
Introducing the ACQUITY UPLC H-Class System, the new UPLC system for HPLC users
Celebrating 35 years of processing solutions! Join us, May 4-6, in Rosemont, IL.
Introducing the ACQUITY UPLC H-Class System, the new UPLC system for HPLC users
See the latest news from Optima Group pharma.
Buy new and used pharmaceutical equipment, used process equipment and laboratory equipment at LabX. Auctions, classifieds, and post FREE wanted ads to locate equipment.
Try a complimentary sample of the new ultra-pure gasket from Gore PharmBIO Products
Major Biotech & Pharmaceutical Equipment Auction from Pfizer, Merck & More
Special offers on new and improved products from Restek.