welcome to bwb tv my name is barry walsh with informa connect today i'll
be interviewing david pollard who is the head of corporate research at sartorius
welcome david it's great to see you again hi barry welcome to be here
i look forward to hearing about your current initiatives let's start with a look ahead
what kind of future is bioprocessing heading towards and accordingly what inventions and
features would be required from process intensification to satisfy those needs
yeah great question barry and it's certainly an exciting time in the in the bio processing
arena i really think that the uh customers and end users are really looking for
you know modular flexible facilities of the future and i think that that is really starting to take
shape as i think we've seen many companies are starting to build these facilities around the
world and um and these facilities really need flexible solutions i really see that
you know it's exciting time in bioprocess for all sorts of different modalities right in in terms of
expanding out from monoclonal antibodies to different uh nanobodies by specifics
adc's biosimilars but also in the gene therapy and cell therapy space and obviously now
uh more prevalently in the in the vaccines arena right and so i do see uh customers really thinking
about how flexible those facilities can be and can they really be smaller footprint
um facilities uh operating spaces within those facilities for really driving multiple products
and multiple processes in the smaller footprint single single-use enabled facilities of the future
you know i think we've even had customers thinking about how
how combined can those multiple facilities be such as you know viral vector production for
gene therapy alongside viral vaccines and really thinking about how flexible and coordinated these
facilities can be um so can we have drug substance for example co-locating with drug product
and really cut and really think about um really close coordinated supply chains of the future and
and have a much more coordinated approach for straight through processing for example
can we think about having you know eliminating some of that drug substance a drug substance
made separately right and tested separately if it was all co-located together you know could
you reduce the analytical drug substancing qaqc drug testing that goes on now and go through to
to drug product in a much more coordinated and potentially more efficient approach
so certainly i think the technologies to do this we need uh obviously intensified
technologies and continue that effort and we see the industry continuing to drive to higher
tides and intensifying the purification stream and thinking and working towards integrated processing
integrating the upstream to capture steps and going beyond that thinking about uh
controlled strategies that allow that uh um overarching control of those integrated processes
and um integrating that with with things like real-time release and quality workflows that allow
for um you know qaqc release on the shop floor and really minimizing the offline analysis time
and uh and qaqc time that happens historically happens after the processing of of the batches
um i think from an inventions perspective clearly
the um you know the continuous processing in the downstream and continuous chromatography steps
is really working to enable that fully integrated process
and as i say the continued expansion of the p-80 toolbox and control strategies to do that
will really work towards the concepts of ultimately autonomous tight workflows
and really work to drive down costs and um and flexibility across you know reducing capital
reducing operating costs and ultimately reducing the cost of goods so that we can find a better
more efficient productive ways to providing drugs to patients right you know much more
flexible and rapid approach um and um and to do this in a much more efficient approach
yeah david that's really exciting and how far down the road would these changes be implemented
in the industry yeah i think there's you know when you think about that whole
um sort of outlining of the vision there i think you can see it in a staggered approach
you know i think you could see now right in the industry implementing these approaches into
clinical production and you know we've heard about for example at the the eci continuous processing
conference last november we heard about the companies that are starting to build the facility
of the futures so i think that you know over the next two years we will start to see more of these
integrated intensified processes moving towards being used for commercial production
and i think that it'll be a staggered approach in the sense of the advanced control strategies and
um technology improvements being staggered and over the next sort of five to ten years um
i see that you know the end users really looking for with with those heterogeneous pipelines of
products they're really looking for flexibility so i see that they're going to want to switch out um
technologies within different unit operations to fit different modalities
and and obviously they're going to want um digital workflows to handle that and
the concept of plug-and-play digital workflows and being able to switch out unit operations that are
that are recognized on a digital network and um and so i think that those
opportunities will start to flow in over the next two to two to two to five year time frame
that's fantastic and so what are the various initiatives that sartorius is working on to
satisfy those needs yeah i can talk broadly around those i think that you know in the short term now
we've really rallied around putting together a launching a intensification platform from upstream
all the way through to downstream so that's a really exciting time for the tourists particularly
around the um access to the simulated moving bed technology now the bio smb so we now have a full
intensified c train and intensified upstream process all the way through to the downstream
the chromatography offerings high capture membrane technologies that we're developing
and also in the single pass single-use tff approaches so i know my colleague
priyanka gupta is presenting on that on that proposals on the 23rd of the uh september at the
the bpi virtual so um and she's listed out she's done a lot of work to show the um the benefits
there in terms of productivity and costs and uh improvements in in throughput and efficiency um
but certainly in the uh in the corporate research space that i am part of you know we're certainly
thinking you know beyond in that five year five to ten year horizon and uh and certainly
um thinking about as i mentioned the advanced control strategies so we've been working within
corporate research to create concepts of new approaches and so some examples of that are the
control strategies that i mentioned and thinking about hybrid control approaches and chris mcgreedy
in the um advanced data analytics in corporate research has been pioneering leading team to build
mechanistic models and hybrid modeling so that we can really have um prediction simulation and
control of an upstream process and we're looking at that and building that for the downstream
and so that would be part of the foundation of an overarching autonomous type control of a
integrated continuous process and um and thinking about a process that can be self-aware and
and and deal with excursions automatically within you know within a design space as a sort of
um five year beyond vision uh concept um so that's an exciting space and we
we're lucky enough to have a um a pilot plan bioprocessing facility in my group
in germany where we're we're building that integrated process and uh and demonstrating
the concepts of what what could be feasible in that in that control strategy approach
and also i think in the upstream space looking at uh intensified c train that we're that we're
launching now that that uh priyanka will talk about but thinking about how we can
improve that further and thinking about a closed process c train uh all the way from the vile vial
to the bioreactor and thinking about what connectors and materials we need to use to do that
i think another area that we're working on that i that i didn't mention that i should
have mentioned in the in the first question of the vision is certainly there's our an increasing uh
realization that we need as an industry we need to do more about sustainability uh and certainly
in in my group at sartorius we're looking at um new plastics and components um thinking about um
recycling and recycling options and biodegradable plastics and the whole concept of designing for
sustainability so thinking about that from the single use components but also from a process
perspective thinking about how can we design the next generation process with process improvements
and technologies not just around productivity but also thinking about the sustainability aspects
so thinking about reducing water use energy use and obviously thinking about reducing waste
and particularly the single-use plastic waste and how we can enable a circular economy approach
and recycling of plastics and bringing plastics back into our bio processing workflow
and certainly there is an so those are the internal things that i talked about that we're
doing it's a tourism the corporate research but we've also been involved in external consortium
because obviously some of these challenges are enormous right and need an industry uh solution
and one of those is the is the nimble uh consortium and um and they have launched a um
a program a nimble led program on intensified and integrated processing and um i'm one of
those arms there is looking at flexibility and second and third generation technologies
with a 10-year horizon but also sustainability is part of that and i co-lead that with colleagues so
we can think about how we can drive some of those uh industry challenges around uh sustainability
so a lot there but certainly uh exciting times for uh thinking about improving
efficiencies and productivity especially with all the different therapeutic areas that are expanding
yeah david those are very exciting and certainly look forward to hearing more about those
initiatives during the sartorius presentations that will be taking place during the bpi virtual
event which will be held on september 21st through the 25th so i wanted to thank you
david for joining us today i know thanks very much for the opportunity and uh glad to be here
thanks yeah you're welcome and thank you everyone for watching bwb tv
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