What Is Holding Up Adoption Of Continuous Flow?

By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

If you went into an automobile assembly plant in the 1960s and compared it to a factory of today, you would see two very different places. Significant advancements in technology have dramatically changed the way vehicles are produced. Unfortunately, if you went into a small molecule manufacturing facility in the 1960s and compared it to today’s facilities, they would look virtually identical. Many of the advances in manufacturing technology seem to have completely bypassed the pharmaceutical industry.

Stephen Sofen, executive director of the Norvartis-MIT center for Continuous Manufacturing, believes this may have occurred for a variety of reasons, including margins, government regulations, and inherent conservatism in the industry. Regardless of the reason, the lack of advancement in the industry is what prompted Bernhardt Trout, a professor in the department of chemical engineering at MIT, to have a conversation with the global head of process development and manufacturing at Norvartis. The conversation centered on the pharmaceutical manufacturing process and the need to change how pharma makes drugs.