Fluorescence spectroscopy for the determination of reconstitution time of an in-vial lyophilised product

In-Vial Detection of Protein Denaturation Using Intrinsic Fluorescence Anisotropy

The conventional quality control techniques for identifying the denaturation of biopharmaceuticals includes sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis for identifying fragmentation, ion exchange chromatography and isoelectric focusing for identifying deamidation, reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for identifying oxidation, and size-exclusion HPLC for identifying aggregation. These stability assessments require essential processes that are destructive to the product tested. All these techniques are lab based and require sample removal from a sealed storage vial, which can breach the sterility. In this work, we investigate the heat- and surfactant-induced denaturation of an in-vial-stored model protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA), by analyzing its intrinsic fluorescence without removing the sample from the vial. A lab-based bespoke setup which can do the measurement in vial is used to demonstrate the change in fluorescence polarization of the protein to determine the denaturation level. The results obtained are compared to circular dichroism and size-exclusion HPLC measurements. The results prove that in-vial fluorescence measurements can be performed to monitor protein denaturation. A cost-effective portable solution to provide a top-level overview of biopharmaceutical product stability from manufacture to the point of patient administration can be further developed using the same technique.

Innovative Drying Technologies for Biopharmaceuticals

In the past two decades, biopharmaceuticals have been a breakthrough in improving the quality of lives of patients with various cancers, autoimmune, genetic disorders etc. With the growing demand of biopharmaceuticals, the need for reducing manufacturing costs is essential without compromising on the safety, quality, and efficacy of products. Batch Freeze-drying is the primary commercial means of manufacturing solid biopharmaceuticals. However, Freeze-drying is an economically unfriendly means of production with long production cycles, high energy consumption and heavy capital investment, resulting in high overall costs. This review compiles some potential, innovative drying technologies that have not gained popularity for manufacturing parenteral biopharmaceuticals. Some of these technologies such as Spin-freeze-drying, Spray-drying, Lynfinity® Technology etc. offer a paradigm shift towards continuous manufacturing, whereas PRINT® Technology and Microglassification^TM allow controlled dry particle characteristics. Also, some of these drying technologies can be easily scaled-up with reduced requirement for different validation processes. The inclusion of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) and offline characterization techniques in tandem can provide additional information on the Critical Process Parameters (CPPs) and Critical Quality Attributes (CQAs) during biopharmaceutical processing. These processing technologies can be envisaged to increase the manufacturing capacity for biopharmaceutical products at reduced costs.