Regulatory Highlights

Innovative Reversed-Phase Chromatography Platform Approach for the Fast and Accurate Characterization of Membrane Vesicles' Protein Patterns

Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) have been widely explored to develop vaccine candidates for bacterial pathogens due to their ability to combine adjuvant properties with immunogenic activity. OMV expresses a variety of proteins and carbohydrate antigens on their surfaces. For this reason, there is an analytical need to thoroughly characterize the species expressed at their surface: we here present a simple and accurate reversed-phase ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography (RP-UPLC) method developed according to quality by design principles. This work provides an analytical alternative to the classical sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) characterization. The higher selectivity and sensitivity of the RP-UHPLC assay allow for the identification of additional protein species with respect to SDS-PAGE and facilitate its precise relative abundance quantification. According to validation results, the assay showed high accuracy, linearity, precision, repeatability, and a limit of quantification of 1% for less abundant proteins. This performance paves the way for improved production campaign consistency while also being analytically simple (no sample pretreatment required), making it suitable for routine quality control testing. In addition, the applicability of the assay to a wider range of vesicle classes (GMMA) was demonstrated.

A Commentary on Co-Processed API as a Promising Approach to Improve Sustainability for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharmaceutical products represent a meaningful target for sustainability improvement and emissions reduction. It is proposed here that rethinking the standard, and often linear, approach to the synthesis of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) and subsequent formulation and drug product processing will deliver transformational sustainability opportunities. The greatest potential arguably involves API that have challenging physico-chemical properties. These can require the addition of excipients that can significantly exceed the weight of the API in the final dosage unit, require multiple manufacturing steps to achieve materials amenable to delivering final dosage units, and need highly protective packaging for final product stability. Co-processed API are defined as materials generated via addition of non-covalently bonded, non-active components during drug substance manufacturing steps, differing from salts, solvates and co-crystals. They are an impactful example of provocative re-thinking of historical regulatory and quality precedents, blurring drug substance and drug product operations, with sustainability opportunities. Successful examples utilizing co-processed API can modify properties with use of less excipient, while simultaneously reducing processing requirements by delivering material amenable to continuous manufacturing. There are also opportunities for co-processed API to reduce the need for highly protective packaging. This commentary will detail the array of sustainability impacts that can be delivered, inclusive of business, regulatory, and quality considerations, with discussion on potential routes to more comprehensively commercialize co-processed API technologies.

CMC Strategies and Advanced Technologies for Vaccine Development to Boost Acceleration and Pandemic Preparedness

This review reports on an overview of key enablers of acceleration/pandemic and preparedness, covering CMC strategies as well as technical innovations in vaccine development. Considerations are shared on implementation hurdles and opportunities to drive sustained acceleration for vaccine development and considers learnings from the COVID pandemic and direct experience in addressing unmet medical needs. These reflections focus on (i) the importance of a cross-disciplinary framework of technical expectations ranging from target antigen identification to launch and life-cycle management; (ii) the use of prior platform knowledge across similar or products/vaccine types; (iii) the implementation of innovation and digital tools for fast development and innovative control strategies.

New Trends in the Quality Control of Enantiomeric Drugs: Quality by Design-Compliant Development of Chiral Capillary Electrophoresis Methods

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a potent method for analyzing chiral substances and is commonly used in the enantioseparation and chiral purity control of pharmaceuticals from different matrices. The adoption of Quality by Design (QbD) concepts in analytical method development, optimization and validation is a widespread trend observed in various analytical approaches including chiral CE. The application of Analytical QbD (AQbD) leads to the development of analytical methods based on sound science combined with risk management, and to a well understood process clarifying the influence of method parameters on the analytical output. The Design of Experiments (DoE) method employing chemometric tools is an essential part of QbD-based method development, allowing for the simultaneous evaluation of experimental parameters as well as their interaction. In 2022 the International Council for Harmonization (ICH) released two draft guidelines (ICH Q14 and ICH Q2(R2)) that are intended to encourage more robust analytical procedures. The ICH Q14 guideline intends to harmonize the scientific approaches for analytical procedures’ development, while the Q2(R2) document covers the validation principles for the use of analytical procedures including the recent applications that require multivariate statistical analyses. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the new prospects for chiral CE method development applied for the enantiomeric purity control of pharmaceuticals using AQbD principles. The review also provides an overview of recent research (2012–2022) on the applicability of CE methods in chiral drug impurity profiling.

Quo Vadis Analytical Procedure Development and Validation?

What do the draft publications ICH Q2(R2) and Q14 for analytical procedure validation and development mean for a regulated good manufacturing practice (GMP) laboratory? Are they consistent with the approach taken by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) <1220> on Analytical Procedure Life Cycle? Why does it take the ICH two documents to describe what the USP can do in one?