Pharma & Biopharma Companies can Target Sustainability with Right-the-First-Time Manufacturing

Meeting and growing sustainability metrics, while continuing to reduce corporate emissions is a goal that continues to gather substantial momentum in the pharmaceutical industry. As of 2022 a quarter of major pharma and biopharma companies are committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Issues, like health equality and access for the nearly 2 billion people whom are currently underserved worldwide, are reliant on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) - initiatives which are designed to improve human and planet health while helping achieve sustainable business practices.

Environmental sustainability can go hand-in-hand with operational excellence. These efforts, geared toward a prosperous and equitable future while building healthy communities, can directly support current and future business operations for pharma and biopharma organizations who have concluded there does not need to be a choice between being environmentally friendly and growing long-term profits.

Digitalization has an important role to play in the green economy. Specifically, "right-the-first-time" drug manufacturing which is helping pharma and biopharma organizations be more operationally efficient. This practice can also help make progress toward the dual challenge of meeting the increasing demand for resources while achieving sustainability and profitability.

Minimizing waste and managing carbon emissions

As pharma and biopharma companies make right-the-first time drug manufacturing part of their initiatives to optimize operations and drug quality, waste minimization and carbon emissions management are organically addressed.

Right-the-first-time manufacturing minimizes waste by ensuring procedures are consistently executed according to SOPs. This practice also helps ensure compliance with required compliance standards and that product quality certification is closer to the point of execution.

Right-the-first-time mitigates the risk of nonconformities and the post-production discovery of poor quality, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars of compromised product and associated costs. In short: by minimizing redundant production runs, right-the-first-time production also reduces emissions. Pharmaceutical and other capital-intensive industries' global efforts to reduce emissions and waste are helping to curb the impact of greenhouse gases which could safeguard the industry's reliance on nature-derived drug compounds.

As of 2022 only 15% of an estimated 300,000 plant species have been evaluated to determine their pharmacological potential. In the current pharmaceutical marketplace 40% of prescription drugs are based on naturally occurring molecules found in plants and 60% of cancer drugs are natural, or synthetic, products inspired by nature. Just 1 example of these species of plants unevaluated is the Peruvian cinchona tree which used to produce the malaria drug quinine and is under threat due to climate change. If carbon emissions and pollution continue to degrade our planet's conditions, the opportunity to source critical resources for drug production will follow.

Prioritizing digitalization

With hitherto unseen events brought on by the pandemic as the backdrop, pharma and biopharma companies are accelerating the adoption of digital tools. Many have realized that processes in place today, such as post-production quality testing and paper-based manufacturing processes, are unsustainable from both an operational and environmental standpoint.

The use of digitalization, cloud technologies and process automation, as outlined in the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) Pharma 4.0 framework, enables efficiencies, consistent quality and right-the-first time manufacturing while being environmentally conscious. For instance, Process Analytical Technology (PAT) is based on implementing at-line and in-line advanced measurement systems for full transparency to the behavior of process parameters and quality attributes. This visibility makes PAT especially useful for monitoring process and product quality, so there are fewer instances of faulty production runs with lost batches. In addition, this capability helps avoid waste created by eliminating poor products after the fact.

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