The companies will focus on pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging technologies, specifically in four key areas: testing new pre-sterilized container and nested closure systems for parenteral medicines, ensuring component compatibility between different members, as well as driving industry awareness of those solutions and educating the industry on new medicine packaging solutions.
Greg Speakman, Vanrx Pharmasystems, founded the Matrix Alliance. Other inaugural members include ARaymond Life, Daikyo Seiko, Datwyler Group, Ompi, Schott AG, Schott Kaisha, and SiO2 Medical Products.
According to Speakman, customers often ask what particular container and closure systems are available, when they will be ready, and how they perform.
“We wanted to proactively get together and be able to answer these questions,” he told us.
“One of the functions of the alliance is to proactively test combinations of different members’ products to confirm compatibly and to be able to provide performance information to customers.”
For contract manufacturing organizations (CMO), Speakman explained that it’s important to have agility in their filling systems, in order to accommodate vials, syringes, cartridges, etc., and to be able to manufacture different products on different days.
“All of the work we’re doing is supporting the members’ ability to support a CMO’s ability to do that,” he added. “Agile filling solutions that can do the kinds of volumes we’re talking about in different types of containers can rapidly change from one medicine to another.”
Ultimately, agile filling solutions make it easier for a CMO to bring on a new project. Additionally, with a predefined container system, pharmaceutical companies can “dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to get a new product to market,” said Speakman.
Alliance members released a joint statement in which they explained: "The need for collaboration in this area arises from the increasing sophistication of manufacturing processes and packaging needed for next-generation parenteral pharmaceuticals. Emerging categories of complex, high-value injectable drugs share the need for innovation in fill / finish and packaging. We believe that collaboration will speed the path of new therapies to the market by our customers, the pharmaceutical companies."