Biopharmaceuticals are medical drugs produced by living cells in so-called bioreactors. Manufacturing costs really matter in this industry and can be as high as 30%. Currently, monitoring of production is carried out offline and employees must come on weekends to regulate the process. A few industry reports stated that current bioprocessing facilities/equipment are inefficient and highly expensive. Companies are willing to implement new technologies to reduce capital investment in equipment, increase operational flexibility and increase speed to market to boost their competitiveness, but also to reduce environmental impact and help patients that are waiting too long for improved therapies.
Biopharmaceutical manufacturers are now encouraged to make investments in the following areas:
Adoption of continuous manufacturing and real-time monitoring technologies to improve operational flexibility and overall scalability; Adoption of single-use and small footprint process analytical technologies to increase flexibility and reduce production lead times, thus lowering capital and operating costs. Energy requirements are minimised as well.
At IRUBIS GmbH (spin-off of the Technical University of Munich), we have developed SUPAIR, a novel and robust ATR-MIR Sensor System aiming to make online and single-use monitoring of bioreactors by mid-infrared spectroscopy to become standard in manufacturing of medical drugs. This approach will lead to increased operational flexibility, reduced costs of the manufacturing process, and will accelerate time- to- market of higher quality medicines to the patients.
