The myths about the lifecycle of disposable bioreactors are no longer true; According to Sarfaraz K. Niazi, PhD, in his most recent column, the time when biosimilar development was carried out in enormous, hard-piped stainless steel tanks is long gone.

The technology of large bioreactors and billion-greenback investments is over. After several years of work, a small bioreactor of no more than 1,000 L can now continuously produce a commercial supply of biologics.
![]() |
| Source: DALLE-HEALTH |
Additionally, it needs to be made abundantly smooth that the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act places restrictions on the method by which a product can be approved. This instance, adjoining fabricating, applies to perfusions framework in which proteins be emitted. Conversely, since both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells secrete, continuous manufacturing is best suited for significant dose antibodies and other eukaryotic systems that permit post-translational modification.

A bioreactor, seize chromatography, virus filtration, virus inactivation, buffer exchange, and awareness via tangential flow chromatography are all examples of unit operations that fall under continuous manufacturing. Every unit attempt is included with close by unit tasks, a flood line, or a tank interfacing unit tasks.
Continuous operations can accommodate versions in mass glide prices or method dynamics through the usage of a surge line or tank. In an integrated system with two or more unit operations, regardless of their nature, it involves continuously Feeding enter substances into, remodeling in-technique substances within, and concurrently casting off output substances from a production technique. The price may be in addition decreased through integrating the fill and end unit operations in a brief quantity of time.. A modular integrated system for everything from cell culture to vials and syringes is on the horizon; A similar illustration has already been applied to the production of messenger RNA.
Because continuous monitoring systems eliminate many testing requirements, the cost of batch testing is significantly reduced. Since a single run can provide process and product validation, other high-cost components of at-scale process performance qualification lots are significantly reduced, as is the time required to submit a biologics license application (BLA). Samples taken during the cycle can be used to compare critical quality attributes for Analytical evaluation withinside the improvement of biosimilars, that's every other great price financial savings for developers. I actually have submitted my inquiry through the FDA portal's remark section.
The FDA has likewise recorded augmentations to the Normal Specialized Archive for the Enlistment of Drugs for Human Utilize well defined for ceaseless assembling BLA entries, making it clear to designers what they need to submit
.The guideline's most important aspects include:
The batch size can be set in stone, or it can fall within a predetermined range. A post-approval change will be necessary if the project goes beyond the defined range.
The quantity of output material, input material, and run time at a specified mass flow rate constitute the batch size produced by continuous manufacturing. A single thaw of one or more vials from the same cell bank can result in one or more harvests in continuous manufacturing processes.
Changing the assembling mode from group to constant requires a control technique to lay out item likeness and evaluate the requirement for extra bioequivalence, nonclinical and clinical investigations, and steadiness information.
At specific points in the drug substance manufacturing process that have been demonstrated to be crucial for controlling the quality attributes of the product, drug substance in-line release tests for pH, osmolality, and protein concentration as well as online release tests for purity, charge heterogeneity, aggregation, and low molecular weight entities can be carried out.
Continuous manufacturing is exclusive to validation of harvested cell culture material over an extended period of time and ongoing drug substance extraction. This necessitates evidence that each piece of cell culture material used to make a particular batch of medicinal ingredients is acceptable. Additionally, new real-time decision-making technologies, such as rapid testing for intruding agents, have the potential to lessen the impact of contamination events by enabling prompt detection and appropriate responses throughout continuous operation.
It's possible that the output material's release test is a substitute for the standard method of release testing. For quality attributes, such as potency, for which analytical technologies are not available for online or in-line measurements, conventional offline testing is required for product release. In a similar vein, conventional tests for monitoring and control—such as microbiological analytical methods and other tests that call for prolonged processing times—may also be required.
The in vitro cell age limit for production cells remains the same, even though bioreactors for continuous manufacturing operate longer than bioreactors for batch manufacturing. As a result, a bioreactor operating in continuous mode under various culture conditions may not meet previously established limits of in vitro cell age for a batch mode run. Information from production cells that have been developed to the recommended in vitro cell age or beyond in pilot-plant size or commercial-scale conditions ought to serve as the basis for the in vitro cell age limit used for production.
Even though the drug substance is not isolated, the dossier should detail the origin and fate of potential impurities (such as related substances, residual solvents, catalysts), the robustness of impurity clearance, and impurity carryover into the drug product. In addition, the overall control strategy ought to incorporate the control of impurity formation and clearance.
The contaminations in the medication item determination might vary from those in the medication substance in particular.
Because the drug is not isolated and stored in an integrated process, stability data cannot be used to define a retest period.
A biosimilar developer shouldn't choose continuous manufacturing over batch manufacturing, in my opinion. In addition, as the competition heats up, the approved biosimilars can be switched out for better profit margins.
However, careful planning is required to reduce the switching cost and speed up the transition. New manufacturing is easier to set up, and single-use technologies should be used to their full potential. The misconceptions regarding the lifecycle of disposable bioreactors have vanished. Big Pharma's fad of hard-piped, enormous stainless steel tanks is long gone.

Public Institutes of Sciences, Designing, and Medication; Division of Life and Earth Sciences; Board on Technology and Chemical Sciences. Modernizing Pharmaceutical Manufacturing with Continuous Manufacturing: Workshop Proceedings DC (Washington): Public Institutes Press (US); January 30, 2019. 12th of April, 2023. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30994997/

0 Comments