Pharma manufacturing news in brief
pharmafile | February 4, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â ACS, Amcor, Beanne, Iogen Bio-products, Novozymes, PluristemÂ
Facility investments from Amcor and Pluristem, Beanne Chemical falls foul of FDA inspectors, Novozymes acquisition plus a green chemistry app.
Amcor Rigid Plastics has announced a $20 million expansion of its bottle manufacturing operation in Orlando, Florida, response to what it said was strong market demand for beverage and pharmaceutical packaging. The investment will allow the company to centralise preform manufacturing and warehousing while delivering “key sustainability advantages including improved logistics and shipping efficiencies”, it said in a press release. Specifically, it will eliminate the need for three offsite warehousing sites.
Cell therapy specialist Pluristem Therapeutics has acquired and moves into a GMP facility in Israel that that will allow it to produce mass quantities of its PLacental eXpanded (PLX) cells, which are in development for a range of indications including peripheral artery disease, and have completed preliminary clinical trials. The manufacturing facility will have the capability to produce different PLX product candidates with the potential capacity of over 150,000 doses annually, said the firm.
The FDA has advised Taiwan’s Beanne Chemical to carry out a wide-ranging revamp of its facility in Taichung City after an inspection revealed the company failed to document production and process controls for its manufacturing operations, while validation of manufacturing processes and stability testing was also found to be lacking. The agency staff also found no proof of equipment qualification and cleaning validation.
Novozymes has acquired the industrial enzymes business of Canada’s Iogen Corp for around 370 million Danish kroner ($68 million) plus potential earn-out payments of up to 70 million kroner in a deal that expands its non-biopharma enzymes business. Iogen Bio-Products produces and sells enzymes for the pulp & paper, textile, grain-processing and animal feed industries. The Iogen division company has around 70 employees and sells more than 20 products globally.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) has introduced an Apple iOS app to help chemists use environmentally-friendly solvents in the synthesis of pharmaceutical chemicals. The app – called Green Solvents – is freely available and based on information collated by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) in its Pharmaceutical Roundtable Solvent Selection Guide. “Making green chemistry information freely available or at very low cost via such apps is a paradigm shift that could be exploited by content providers and scientists to expose their green chemistry ideas to a larger audience,” say the developers in an article.
Phil Taylor
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