As the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) motivates the pharma industry to move away from traditional techniques for drug manufacture towards Continuous processes, David H. Thompson, a Professor in Purdue’s Department of Chemistry & a member of the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research, has written a research paper on the Continuous manufacturing of Lomustine. 

Lomustine is prescribed to people with Hodgkin's lymphoma & certain brain cancers.  An important feature of the method developed is that it can be used for other pharmaceutical products.

This video shows the use of the Labtrix® S1 in this research.

The FDA put out a statement on February 26 saying the continuous process allows manufacturers to more easily scale operations to meet demand & should help reduce drug shortages.  The statement also commented on the fact that continuous manufacturing can provide a more robust, lower cost & diverse supply of drug products.

The goal is to improve manufacturing flexibility, enhance quality & uniformity, while lowering the costs for patients.  Continuous manufacturing is an alternative to “batch” production where the drug product is produced continuously through a sequence of coupled flow reactors.  Thompson & his Team selected continuous manufacturing for Lomustine because of improved quality monitoring throughout the manufacturing process.  In addition, this approach can also reduce production costs by utilising a safer & smaller production facility.

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We look forward to seeing more developments from Purdue in the future!