Featured Articles

Features

While financial investment in novel therapies provides patients with new treatment options and improved quality of care, the pharmaceutical industry also recognizes its responsibility to transition toward more sustainable development, manufacturing, and stewardship of medicines throughout their life cycle.

Features

To enable changes across the pharmaceutical industry, sustainability should be included alongside quality, efficacy, and safety when assessing medicines. This article reviews two case studies that cover sustainable pack types and extension of shelf life. With the drive to manage unmet medical need through acceleration of drug development programs, postapproval sustainability variations will...

Features

The scientific community accepts that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cause global warming and climate change.1

  • 1Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.” Finalized 9 August 2021.
Online Exclusives

Many emerging tools and technologies support the environmental sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry. In facility design, solutions are derived through science-based analyses of environmental impacts from the materials, processes, services, and architecture. From greener energy sources to a reduction in the type and amount of emissions, we are seeing improvement in this sector’s...

Features

The imperative for global action to tackle climate change is clear and the pharmaceutical industry has a key role to play. Governments have entered into international commitments to reduce climate impact (carbon emissions) and protect nature (water, land, air, and biodiversity) with policy frameworks established to facilitate and drive progress against agreed targets.1

  • 1United...
Features

The expected FDA approval for a Treprostinil dry powder inhaler revealed a need for the manufacturer to expand its warehousing and logistics capabilities to support its growing operations. The company’s senior leadership wanted to ensure this expansion came with as minimal an impact on the environment as possible, so a key priority was to provide a net zero energy facility. With a vision for...

Technical

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can reduce or eliminate the uncertainty associated with a cleanroom facility as the planned design can be simulated to predict performance to a high degree of accuracy. This article discusses the use of CFD for the purpose of predicting and optimizing the performance of a cleanroom facility in terms of steady-state airborne particulate levels and for...

Technical

Contamination is one of the top reasons for medicinal product1

  • 1UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. “A Guide to What Is a Medicinal Product.” March 2020.
InTouch

Cultural excellence is the expressed and implied ways in which an organization operates. Excellence in organizational culture is essential for delivering robust and sustained quality performance and ensuring patient-focused outcomes. ISPE’s new Advancing Pharmaceutical Quality (APQ) Guide: Cultural Excellence provides a quality management framework for assessing and advancing an organization’s...

InTouch

With this issue, Pharmaceutical Engineering® launches a new feature in P+E: profiles of Communities of Practice (CoP) leaders. These leaders are central to the success of ISPE’s CoPs, which spearhead the generation of ISPE’s gold standard content, including Good Practice Guides, Pharmaceutical Engineering articles, conference presentations, and training programs.

InTouch

With this issue, Pharmaceutical Engineering® launches a new feature in P+E: profiles of Communities of Practice (CoP) leaders. These leaders are central to the success of ISPE’s CoPs, which spearhead the generation of ISPE’s gold standard content, including Good Practice Guides, Pharmaceutical Engineering articles, conference presentations, and training programs.

Features

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to its widespread industrial adoption, with machine learning (ML) algorithms demonstrating advances in performance in a wide range of tasks. However, this comes with an ever-increasing complexity of the algorithms used, rendering such systems more difficult to explain.1

  • 1Samek, W., and K. R. Müller. “Towards Explainable...
Features

ISPE’s GAMP® 5: A Risk-Based Approach to Compliant GxP Computerized Systems (Second Edition) (GAMP® 5 Guide, 2nd Edition) maintains the principles and framework of the first edition and updates their application in the modern world, including the increased importance of service providers, evolving approaches to software development, and expanded use of software tools and...

Features

In this article, potential Pharma 4.0™ technological solutions that can enhance continuous process verification (CPV) 4.0 are discussed. The necessary paradigm shift will allow companies to predict deviations more accurately, perform root cause analysis (RCA), ensure data integrity and GxP compliance, and ultimately be more competitive in a highly regulated industry.

Features

Resounding clinical successes and maturation of extensive therapeutic pipelines have catapulted oligonucleotides from a fringe modality to therapeutic relevance in just a few short years. Oligonucleotides are a cornerstone of a burgeoning class of drugs classified as nucleic acid therapeutics. These therapies interact with DNA and RNA targets rather than traditional protein therapeutic...

Features

Digital health is transforming the health care landscape through new technologies and platforms in patient care management, conducting of clinical trials, patient data collection, and the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Emerging digital health technologies (DHTs) may improve the quality of life for patients with chronic and debilitating diseases and provide novel health care solutions for...

Features

A reliable supply of raw materials is critical to maintain a robust supply chain to serve patients globally. With shortages, regulatory complexity is compounded due to differences in submission and data requirements from various regulatory agencies. Therefore, there is an increasing need to implement a harmonized regulatory infrastructure that is both flexible and predictable to provide more...

Features

Postapproval change management of pharmaceuticals is an essential part of life-cycle management but is associated with regulatory challenges. Incorporating concepts and tools from the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) Q12 guideline, combined with structured content and data management (SCDM) and a cloud-based data exchange...

Features

Although data and knowledge are both stand-alone disciplines that need to be systematically managed, they also must have a connection. Understanding the relationship between data and knowledge management processes and how people are leveraging advances like Pharma 4.0™ combined with these processes enables quality data transition to knowledge that can help pharmaceutical companies. The authors...

Features

As the pharmaceutical industry continues to grow and evolve, a significant contributor to innovation and evolution is mergers and acquisitions (M&A). M&A can enable academic researchers and small companies to fund and commercialize innovative products. In addition, M&A can help larger organizations secure new and complementary technology and products. In the pharmaceutical...

Features

As the industry experiences significant changes to the way we do business, knowledge capture and sharing are more important now than ever before. The maturing digitalization of the biopharma industry’s business and processes is creating an increasingly data- and information-rich environment that requires more effective mechanisms for sharing data and information. The Knowledge Management team...

Features

The life cycle approach to process validation stresses the need for continued monitoring of process performance to ensure that the manufacturing process remains stable and predictable, i.e., in a state of control. This life cycle stage is known as continued process verification (CPV) or ongoing process verification (OPV).1

  • 1US Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation...

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Latest Articles

Online Exclusives

When working with the common technical dossier (CTD), the structure of Module 2 “follows the scope and outline of the Body of Data in Module 3,”1

  • 1International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. “Concept Paper: M4Q(R2) Common Technical Document on Quality Guideline.” Published 15 November 2021.
iSpeak Blog

We are The Culture Club, a self-formed cross-CoP group of individuals who came together to discuss challenges encountered as we transition quality and validation into the digital world and identify ways to influence cultural changes needed within our industry to better enable innovation. As we are not all from the same CoP, we first needed to establish a way to connect and collaborate with all...

iSpeak Blog

On 17 December 2022, more than 100 people from all over the world gathered online for the 2022 ISPE China Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Summit. With multiple geopolitical and pandemic related challenges in recent years, having a robust supply chain has increasingly become a strategic advantage for the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical supply chain runs through the entire process of new...

iSpeak Blog

Members of the paperless validation subcommittee created this blog post to discuss and recommend “true copy verification practices” for the use of Paperless validation systems to satisfy the current guidance for data integrity, and to discuss how to fully eliminate paper from various validation processes without impacting compliance to these current regulations.

iSpeak Blog

The Biopharmaceutical industry continues to grow and deliver life-changing medicines to patients as evidenced by the number of drug approvals by the FDA year after year. In 2022 alone CDER approved 37 novel drugs, either as new molecular entities (NMEs) under New Drug Applications (NDAs) or as new therapeutic biological products under Biologics License Applications (BLAs). This has all been...

iSpeak Blog

The 2022 ISPE Pharma 4.0™ Emerging Leader Hackathon event was organized by the ISPE Emerging Leaders DACH Affiliate in collaboration with the ISPE Pharma 4.0™ Community of Practice (CoP) Plug and Produce Subcommittee. The goal was to bring together students and young professionals from different fields of study and countries together to explore the emerging challenges and opportunities in...

iSpeak Blog

The lifecycle of interfaces is of crucial importance for the interoperability of systems from different technical and organizational areas within or between companies.

Interfaces are the integration points of connected systems for the transmission of master or transaction data including status updates. Interfaces are typically parts of data streams or data hierarchies, e.g., Lab...

iSpeak Blog

The pharmaceutical industry is rapidly evolving. The major trends in the recent years are (1) fully automated production such as continuous manufacturing and (2) the adoption of digitalized processes for paperless production. Both approaches have significant implications for Annex 1 compliance and the role of Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMOs) in production facilitating these...

iSpeak Blog

ISPE invites Emerging Leaders and Students from all over the globe to join us at this unique virtual event to explore the ISPE Communities of Practice (CoPs) and meet with the leaders of the CoP Steering Committees. This provides an opportunity to engage with industry leaders, learn about the various CoPs, and find out how you as an Emerging Leader or Student can get more involved.

iSpeak Blog

Arriving in the United States at the age of 17 to pursue my dreams was one of the greatest challenges of my life. It was through this experience that I learned the importance of challenging my perspective. This was made possible through my involvement with ISPE, and four years later, I’m proud to announce the launch of Mentor ISPE.

iSpeak Blog

Pharmaceutical and biotech portfolios continue to transition from high volume blockbusters to a diversified set of lower volume, targeted therapeutics. At the same time, many companies are pursuing localized manufacturing to adjust to supply chain challenges and to improve access to medicine. The industry must also address increased pricing pressure due to inflation and government policies....

Insights

Sustainability is a buzzword that has been tossed back and forth across industries for decades. For a while, it was seen as something that consumers didn’t really care about, but now the reality is different. According to a 2022 study,1

  • 1Ashkin Group. “Survey: Do Consumers Value Sustainability-Based Products?” Cleanlink.com (2 June 2022).
Insights

2023 continues to move right along—the first quarter is almost over. I remain very optimistic about this year as ISPE International, with support from the International Board, continues to make progress on our 2023 objectives and the 2023—2025 ISPE Strategic Plan.

InTouch

When nominating Martin (Marty) Lipa, Executive Director, Knowledge Management, Merck & Co. Inc., for the 2022 Max Seales Yonker Member of the Year Award, Anne Greene, Professor, Technological University Dublin, said, “Arguably the last year has been pivotal for the practice of knowledge management (KM) in the pharmaceutical industry based on new knowledge management frameworks and guidance...

Insights

Arriving in the United States at the age of 17 to pursue my dreams was one of the greatest challenges of my life. It was through this experience that I learned the importance of challenging my perspective. This was made possible through my involvement with ISPE, and four years later, I’m proud to announce the launch of Mentor ISPE.

iSpeak Blog

Here’s How Our Members Intend on Making It a Reality…

Each International Women’s Day, the world comes together to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, calling for accelerated equality across borders. International Women’s Day has taken place for over a century, with the first taking place in 1911 and having the support of over a million...

iSpeak Blog

Just off the heels of ISPE’s Facilities of the Future Conference, which took place this past February, ISPE’s Women in Pharma continues to leverage its momentum to amplify the group’s mission to create a more equitable pharmaceutical industry on a grand scale.

iSpeak Blog

The second day of the 2023 ISPE Facilities of the Future Conference in North Bethesda, Maryland, included keynotes addressing various facets of the industry and their impact on future facilities planning and development. Key among these included a presentation by the director of FDA’s CBER on cell and gene therapy manufacturing and a range of considerations behind new facility planning from a...

iSpeak Blog

The updated EU GMP Annex 1 Revision: Manufacture of Sterile Medicinal Products released in August 2022 introduced changes which require more stringent sterile manufacturing processes, including implementing a contamination control strategy and new technology to reduce the risk of contamination. Regulators discussed those changes and how they impact manufacturing practices during panel...

iSpeak Blog

ISPE is launching a new program, Enabling Global Pharma Innovation: Delivering for Patients in support of many regulatory agencies’ ambitions to promote introduction of innovative pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is incumbent for industry to modernize and innovate pharmaceutical manufacturing to improve efficiency and increase confidence in quality assurance for the benefit of...

Current Issue

March / April 2023

Sustainability by Design for Pharmaceutical Products Cover: As the pharmaceutical industry faces ever-changing global challenges and market forces, it must review and revise product design to ensure that quality products remain available in the marketplace while moving toward zero pollution for air, water, and soil. This article provides an introduction on how quality products can integrate...