Catalent is adjusting its packaging operations by closing one facility and simultaneously expanding another, which it believes will improve the service offered to its folding carton customers.
US CMO Formatech has brought a new Virtis Benchmark 3000 luophilizer into service at its manufacturing facility in Andover, Massachusetts, boosting capacity by 13,000 vials per production run.
US Biotechnology firm Cel-Sci has unveiled a new manufacturing process, cold 4°C Aseptic Filling, that it claims can improve the shelf-life and potency of biologic drugs produced using stem cells.
Pall CEO Eric Krasnoff says delayed drug industry capital expenditure and moves to conserve inventory in the current global gloom caused life science sales to fall 8 per cent for the second quarter.
German coating technology specialist Driam hopes its new Driaconti-T continuous tablet coating platform will win over manufacturers wishing to improve process efficiency in times of economic gloom.
UK CRO Richmond Pharmacology has unveiled a new data management offering for the drug industry that it claims will help trial sponsors cut costs, save time and help guarantee data integrity.
Belgian biopharmaceutical company UCB has contracted Proteros Biostructures of Germany to provide support in the structure-based discovery of small-molecule drugs.
Macao Health Bureau director Lam Ping-yan says tabletting delays at Euopharm Laboratories' plant in Hong Kong, China may have led to contamination of the hyperuricemia drug Purinol (allopurinol) linked to several deaths.
ESS Technologies has extended the range of its Monoblock platform with a new bottle feeder capable of accurately filling and capping up to 120 small pharmaceutical liquid bottles a minute.
UK firms Cambridge Major Laboratories (CML) and Novacta Biosystems are to collaborate and develop a range of process development, custom synthesis and biocatalysis offerings for the pharmaceutical industry.
Symetix has launched a compact high-volume optical inspection system that is capable of verifying the colour, size and shape of capsules and tablets and removing defective products.
It is not compulsory to respond to form 483s detailing deficiencies at a facility but the FDAs latest guidance fully recommends companies do so to avoid being issued with a warning letter.
Wonderware has launched software to improve the management of batch processes, offering users the ability to easily install additional processing lines or manufacturing cells.
Indian process technology firm ACE Technologies has won the contract to sell and service GEA Pharma Systems’ range of Courtoy tablet presses to local drug manufacturers as part of the latter company’s Asian expansion plan.
Japanese chemicals firm Asahi Kasei has ramped up its bioprocessing operations with the acquisition of US industrial processing specialist TechniKrom’s biopharmaceuticals business.
Work into solvents that can switch polarity from an ionic to non-ionic form, negating the need to remove them after each step, has won a researcher the John C Polanyi Award.
IMA chief financial officer Sergio Marzo says that although demand for its machines has been strong so far this year, the number of orders it receives in the second quarter will provide a better reflection of the pharmaceutical industry’s position.
Genzyme will launch the same biologic under two different names in the US after the FDA decided the drug produced at 2000L was considerably different to the 160L version.
An inspection system for sealing caps developed by Germany’s Vitronic could make the need for rotating pharmaceutical bottles and ampoules on the production line a thing of the past.
Crucell and DSM Biologics have added fellow Dutch firm Bioceros to the PER.C6 vendor network to provide manufacturing and support capacity in line with increased demand for the cell line.
Australian packaging company Amcor is in talks with mining giant Rio Tinto about buying part of the latter’s Alcan Packaging Division, confirming speculation that emerged late last year.
New research suggests that deuteration, the replacement of hydrogen atoms with heavier forms, can alter an API's crystallisation properties and help drugmakers make better more effective drugs.
Millipore hopes its $23m (€18m) swoop for Guava Technologies will draw attention away from the underperformance of its bioprocess division, revenue from which fell 6 per cent in Q4 to $214m (€165m) and 2 per cent for 2008 overall.
DSM is evaluating Micronit Microfluidics’ new microreactor, which has been developed to perform industrial scale fluid reactions of fine chemicals in a continuous process.
Industrial processing giant Pall is stepping up global promotion efforts for its Allegro platform as the market for single-use drug manufacturing options, estimated to be worth around $400m (€308m), continues to expand.
As the sophistication of counterfeit drug packaging continues to improve it is becoming harder and harder to tell real products from fake. in-PharmaTechnologist spoke with Alpvision's Roland Meylan about the company's approach to brand authentication.
ABB has launched its latest process analytical technology (PAT) software xPAT, which it claims will help companies implement quality by design (QbD) through a products entire lifecycle.
Equateq is at Informex 2009 showcasing its synthesised 98 per cent pure omega-6 DGLA, use of which has previously been restricted owing to difficulties obtaining it from natural sources.
Novavax believes its new $5m vaccine facility, which became operational this week, shows the cost and efficiency advantages of manufacturing with disposable, single use systems.
The market for packaging machinery is set to grow 5 per cent a year and be worth $40bn (€30.3bn) by 2012, driven partly by a hike in demand for drug products in “pharmerging” economies, according to a new industry report.
BayBio has called on California’s leaders to enact legislation to promote biomanufacturing in response to the aggressive policies pursued by other states.
December's packaging deal between McKesson and Burgopak is further evidence of drug industry's determination to improve patient compliance. in-PharmaTechnologist asked Burgopak's global head of automation Mark Symonds for further details...
Positive noises from an FDA panel on GTC Biotherapeutics’ recombinant antithrombin ATryn may further the use of transgenic animals for drug production but should the manufacturing process rather than the drug’s safety be our prime concern?
In the future it may be possible to grow supplies of blood platelets in bioreactors rather than relying on donated supplies, according to US researchers.
The European Association of Pharmaceutical Full-line Wholesalers (GIRP) says it has concerns about the anti-counterfeiting proposals contained in the European Commission's recently-released 'pharmaceutical package.'
To accompany the map detailing job losses, which can be viewed here, we have picked out the details and trends from the data, uncovering the state of US pharmaceutical employment in 2008.
Australian drug development firm Cancer Therapeutics (CTx) has selected IDBS’ E-workbook and ActivityBase platforms to manage its global drug development programmes.
Alcan Packaging’s decision to close its packaging production facility in Nebraska, US, at a cost of 71 jobs, follows just weeks after parent company, Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, announced some 14,000 lay offs.
Quadro Engineering has entered into a partnership to distribute Micro-Macinazione’s Jet-Mill products in the Americas, as well as launching its own API sifter.
Efforts to sure-up pharma track and trace rules and combat counterfeiting are a significant opportunity for specialist labelling firms, but the pace of change is proving to be a frustration, according to Domino Printing Sciences MD, Nigel Bond.
GlaxoSmithKline has gone into partnership with Indian contract manufacturing and development services company Kemwell to set up an R&D facility aimed at developing new oral healthcare products.
Pall Life Sciences has launched its Allegro 3D biocontainers, which have been designed to improve the performance of the company’s large-scale, single use manufacturing systems.
One of Actavis’ Bulgarian production facilities is being bought out by the management, which will provide contract manufacturing services to the generic maker and other companies.
Haemacure is calling for the International Court of Arbitration in Paris, France to force CSL Behring to make a $1.5m milestone payment that it believes is now due under a 2002 settlement related to firms’ disputed Hemaseel project.
Designed as a next generation cellulose-based virus removal filter, Planova™ S20N has demonstrated robust filtration performance for challenging molecules...
Bispecific antibodies (BisAbs), which can bind to two distinct antigens, are prone to high levels of aggregate (10-30%), challenging traditional platform...
Various options exist for freezing biopharmaceutical bulk material, but selecting the most effective and efficient approach for each cold chain can be...
