Rutgers and NJII to set up continuous manufacturing institute

19-Oct-2017 - Last updated on 25-Oct-2017 at 15:14 GMT

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The New Jersey Innovation Institute and Rutgers University have teamed up to establish an institute to promote the development of continuous manufacturing technologies for drug production.

The New Jersey Continuous Manufacturing Institute (NJCMI) will let pharma firms develop processes and production technologies in collaboration with NJII and Rutgers experts. The centre will also house a training centre.

Rutgers has a history of working with drug companies on manufacturing.

The organisation helped Janssen develop the continuous production method for the HIV treatment Prezista (darunavir). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the process in 2016.

Donald H. Sebastian, president of NJII said, “This partnership with Rutgers builds on over a decade of leading edge R&D, and deep faculty expertise that NJCMI can leverage to make available pilot-scale technologies that meet pharmaceutical industry demands for higher production volume, greater efficiency and reduced cost.

He added that, “I expect the center will be a strong magnet attracting all the links of the pharmaceutical value chain to make New Jersey a place of business.”

Continuous manufacturing

Regulators in the US and Europe have been encouraging drug firms to use continuous processes to make the products for the past few years.

Douglas Hausner from Rutgers University-based Centre for Structured Organic Particulate Systems’ (C-SOPS) underlined this point at the Oral Solid Dosage (OSD) Continuous Manufacturing in the Current Regulatory Landscape summit in Malta in June.

He told delegates ““Currently the FDA is strongly advocating for the adoption of the technology.

“They have created specific offices to facilitate this technology, funded work at universities, re-aligned internally, and hired a significant number of engineers all within the last 2-3 years,” adding “In my opinion, they really could not be encouraging this more than they are already are.”