The development of personalized and specialty medicines along with increased use of pre-filled syringes impact the machinery used to manufacture and package these highly specialized products. As batches and regimens trend shorter and more customized, the need for flexible equipment to accomplish more than one task is paramount. For drug manufacturers, flexibility is of the utmost importance and manufacturing and packaging equipment increasingly offers multi-purpose features.
 
Deborah Smook, VP of Marketing & Business Development for TurboFil Packaging Machines LLC, an equipment specialist dedicated to the design and development of liquid filling and assembly machines, offers insight into today’s manufacturing equipment trends and some of the latest advances. –KB  
 
Contract Pharma: What are the pharma/biopharma trends impacting manufacturing equipment?
 
Deborah Smook: Especially for contract manufacturers, flexibility is becoming crucial. Many machinery suppliers work in areas that are highly specialized, necessitating exacting trials and, once production commences, yield only limited, often versioned runs. Amid this landscape, it’s important to have multi-purpose machines that can quickly pivot to perform other related production tasks rather than resting idle.
 
Such versatility is the impetus behind TurboFil’s SimpliFil Syringe Filling & Assembly System, a module for automated, uncomplicated production of a wide range of syringe formats. Employing a versatile yet precise setup that accurately fills syringes via ceramic piston, peristaltic pump or direct draw from a reservoir bag, the unit is suitable for small to medium batches. Its signature highlight is a walking beam indexing configuration, which provides intuitive operation and simplified, recipe-based changeover. For heightened precision, TurboFil’s unique TipFil™ technology allows syringes to be filled through the tip – a step-saving innovation eliminating the need to insert plungers post-filling. 
 
On the other side of the coin, highly specialized, customer-specific machines also are increasingly in demand. This exemplifies the hyper-customization of medicine in general, including the growth in medical device+drug combination products.
 
Contract Pharma: What are some of the latest advances in packaging equipment?
 
Deborah Smook: Everything from cams and mechanical systems to servomotors and robots have experienced varying degrees of enhancements or even revolutions. Advancements in cameras have occurred along parallel lines, allowing for new capabilities and tightened control over existing ones. All of this has meant more precise, more expedient production – and customer expectations have matured accordingly.
 
From a market standpoint, as a supplier who deals deeply in drug containers and delivery systems we can report that pre-filled syringes in particular have skyrocketed in popularity. Not only has overall demand surged – independent of the COVID-19 crisis, it must be said – but the types of companies utilizing pre-filled syringe formats has blossomed and branched out. For example, 503a and 503b, also called compounding pharmacies, are a phenomenon that have only come about in the past few years. While many of these are mostly re-packagers and therefore only indirectly tied to drug production, these entities tend to have specialized, even customized needs since they’re filling such a broad range of containers.