Resilience and risk analysis of fault-tolerant process control design in continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing

Impact of GAMP 5, data integrity and QbD on quality assurance in the pharmaceutical industry: How obvious is it?

In the pharmaceutical industry, it is essential to ensure the safety and efficacy of medicinal products. Therefore a robust quality assurance framework is needed. This manuscript examines the impact of GAMP 5 and data integrity (DI) on quality assurance, while also highlighting the role of quality by design (QbD) principles. GAMP 5 is a widely used framework for validating automated systems that establishes quality assurance practices. DI guarantees the reliability of data collected throughout various stages of drug development. The integration of QbD principles promotes a systematic approach to development that emphasizes a deep understanding of critical quality attributes, risk management, and continuous improvement. With their implementation, organizations are able to meet regulatory requirements and provide safe medications to patients worldwide.

Developing a Virtual Flowability Sensor for Monitoring a Pharmaceutical Dry Granulation Line

Current technologies to measure granule flowability involve at-line methods that can take hours to perform. This is problematic for a continuous dry granulation tableting line, where the quality assurance and control of the final tablet products depend on real-time monitoring and control of powder flowability. Hence, a real-time alternative is needed for measuring the flowability of the granular products coming out of the roller compactor, which is the unit operation immediately preceding the tablet press. Since particle analyzers have the potential to take inline measurements of the size and shape of granules, they can potentially serve as real-time flowability sensors, given that the size and shape measurements can be used to reliably predict flowability measurements. This paper reports on the use of Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression to utilize distributions of size and shape measurements in predicting the output of three different types of flowability measurements: rotary drum flow, orifice flow, and tapped density analysis. The prediction performance of PLS had a coefficient of determination ranging from 0.80 to 0.97, which is the best reported performance in the literature. This is attributed to the ability of PLS to handle high collinearity in the datasets and the inclusion of multiple shape characteristics-eccentricity, form factor, and elliptical form factor-into the model. The latter calls for a change in industry perspective, which normally dismisses the importance of shape in favor of size; and the former suggests the use of PLS as a better way to reduce the dimensionality of distribution datasets, instead of the widely used practice of pre-selecting distribution percentiles.

PAT implementation for advanced process control in solid dosage manufacturing - A practical guide

The implementation of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing requires advanced control strategies rather than traditional end product testing or an operation within a small range of controlled parameters. A high level of automation based on process models and hierarchical control concepts is desired. The relevant tools that have been developed and successfully tested in academic and industrial environments in recent years are now ready for utilization on the commercial scale. To date, the focus in Process Analytical Technology (PAT) has mainly been on achieving process understanding and quality control with the ultimate goal of real-time release testing (RTRT). This work describes the workflow for the development of an in-line monitoring strategy to support PAT-based real-time control actions and its integration into solid dosage manufacturing. All stages are discussed in this paper, from process analysis and definition of the monitoring task to technology assessment and selection, its process integration and the development of data acquisition.

Emerging Challenges and Opportunities in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Distribution

The rise of personalised and highly complex drug product profiles necessitates significant advancements in pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution. Efforts to develop more agile, responsive, and reproducible manufacturing processes are being combined with the application of digital tools for seamless communication between process units, plants, and distribution nodes. In this paper, we discuss how novel therapeutics of high-specificity and sensitive nature are reshaping well-established paradigms in the pharmaceutical industry. We present an overview of recent research directions in pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain design and operations. We discuss topical challenges and opportunities related to small molecules and biologics, dividing the latter into patient- and non-specific. Lastly, we present the role of process systems engineering in generating decision-making tools to assist manufacturing and distribution strategies in the pharmaceutical sector and ultimately embrace the benefits of digitalised operations.

Data reconciliation in the Quality-by-Design (QbD) implementation of pharmaceutical continuous tablet manufacturing

Data provided by in situ sensors is always affected by some level of impreciseness as well as uncertainty in the measurements due to process operation disturbance or material property variance. In-process data precision and reliability should be considered when implementing active product quality control and real-time process decision making in pharmaceutical continuous manufacturing. Data reconciliation is an important strategy to address such imperfections effectively, and to exploit the data redundancy and data correlation based on process understanding. In this study, a correlation between tablet weight and main compression force in a rotary tablet press was characterized by the classical Kawakita equation. A load cell, situated at the exit of the tablet press chute, was also designed to measure the tablet production rate as well as the tablet weight. A novel data reconciliation strategy was proposed to reconcile the tablet weight measurement subject to the correlation between tablet weight and main compression force, in such, the imperfect tablet weight measurement can be reconciled with the much more precise main compression force measurement. Special features of the Welsch robust estimator to reject the measurement gross errors and the Kawakita model parameter estimation to monitor the material property variance were also discussed. The proposed data reconciliation strategy was first evaluated with process control open-loop and closed-loop experimental data and then integrated into the process control system in a continuous tablet manufacturing line. Specifically, the real-time reconciled tablet weight measurements were independently verified with an at-line Sotax Auto Test 4 tablet weight measurements every five minutes. Promising and reliable performance of the reconciled tablet weight measurement was demonstrated in achieving process automation and quality control of tablet weight in pilot production runs.