After roughly four years of writing about biosimilars, I can finally say I attended the Annual Biosimilar Medicines Conference. This conference was valuable to get a closer look at Europe as well, not only to see where things are working, but also where they're not.
Building a bioprocessing facility is usually a complicated process and requires partnering with not only drug developers, but also many different experts in various industries. BeiGene, a commercial-stage biotechnology company, can attest to these challenges.
Through common sense and creative thinking, the industry can discover new ways to achieve success and sustainability in the biosimilar market.
Biacore SPR assays provide an automated and reproducible real-time determination of active concentrations that can be considered an alternative to traditional ELISA approach. This article provides general guidance on how to convert an existing ELISA assay to a Biacore SPR-assay and by doing so, shows how you can get results in less than half the time compared with ELISA.
Validating host cell protein ELISAs is an essential part of biologics development. But what makes these coverage assays so vital, and what could we improve? Read how this 2D DIBE approach combines the best of existing methods.
Biologics developers and manufacturers demand an accurate and reliable assay for host cell protein (HCP) quantitation. Let’s take a close look at why analytical scientists turn to the ELISA, and how it fits into process development.
Oncolytic viruses constitute a new promising therapeutic approach for treatment of cancer. Here’s an example of a scalable, end-to-end process for oncolytic adenovirus production using modern tools and technologies.
Using rocking bioreactor systems can shorten the seed train prior to inoculation and provide optimized growth conditions for sensitive cells. This study presents a robust production of adenovirus using a rocking bioreactor system.
A single-step downstream process using protein A chromatography to purify a bispecific antibody (BsAb) in early screening has been successfully developed to replace an existing-three step process.
In addition to an explanation of digital manufacturing, this paper covers how it can improve the productivity and robustness of existing processes and facilities. Gain and understanding of digital biomanufacturing for upstream and downstream processes as well as the technologies that support digital manufacturing of biologics.
Advances in bioprocess monitoring and analytics, as well as in bioinformatics and computational biology, are changing the way we look at the bioproduction process. This poster explains the drivers of the digital biomanufacturing revolution and how they are steering us towards science-based increased plantwide efficiency, quality, adaptability, and profitability.
Increasing the integration of upstream and downstream processing and moving toward increased automation results in greater optimization of process efficiency - a key goal for biopharma production.
From new customer bases and vaccines to biosimilars and antibodies: what are the emerging trends and hot topics in biopharma, and how can companies take advantage of them in order to succeed?
If your business strategy doesn’t fully align with your organization’s capabilities in terms of expertise, capacity, and resources, it might be wise to consider outsourcing to a biologics CDMO for speed to market.
In the second of this three-part "Ask the Board" series, Biosimilar Development's editorial board members discuss their predictions on how biosimilar development, market access, commercialization efforts, and regulatory and reimbursement policies will evolve in 2019.
Biosimilars are considered to be low-cost substitutions for pricy, large-molecule biologics. However, biosimilars must meet the same quality, safety, and efficacy as their reference biologic. Manufacturing biosimilars requires a more complicated procedure than that of manufacturing small molecule generics. Companies manufacturing biosimilars are focused on creating a chemical structure that is as close as possible to that of the reference product. Failure rates and operational costs pose a challenge for those companies involved in manufacturing biosimilars compared to those manufacturing small molecule generics.
Small molecule generics are created using the same active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and, therefore, are chemically identical to that of the originator medicine. The manufacturing process for small molecules comprises only one-fifth of the total in-process tests required to meet Good Manufacturing Practice compared to that of biologic medicines (50 vs. 250 in-process tests). In fact, the manufacturing process for a large molecule is so complex, it cannot be duplicated by two different manufacturers, as the cells used in biologic medicines are unique to the company manufacturing each biologic.
Manufacturing a biologic consists of genetically modifying a cell, which becomes the basis for a cell line used for the production of the necessary protein for the biologic medicine. The protein is then separated from the cells and purified. Biosimilars are created from small alterations to the manufacturing process which creates a molecule that is not identical but closely resembles the reference product. While the differences in the biosimilar molecule might be slight, these changes in the manufacturing process of a biosimilar can affect the efficacy and safety of a biosimilar compared to the reference biologic. Over the past decade, the manufacturing process for proteins has become more standardized and the required technology has become increasingly accessible, leading to reductions in biosimilars production costs. As a result, a greater number of companies have begun manufacturing biosimilars, while reference brand manufacturers are setting their sights on bolstering pipelines and manufacturing biobetters to maintain market share for their soon-to-be-off-patent reference products.
