Supporting a compound from discovery to clinical phases and potentially commercial phases requires an immense amount of time, energy, and money. Regulatory management is paramount during the drug development pipeline funnel, and recognizing Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs) is the foundation of drug safety and efficacy.

Every country has its own regulatory authority, responsible for enforcing rules and regulations and issuing guidelines for drug development, licensing, registration, manufacturing, marketing, and labeling of pharmaceutical products.^[1]

Alcami recently contributed to a special feature in Drug Development and Delivery magazine titled "Designing a CMC Strategy for Accelerated Development of Biotherapeutics."

As the pipeline of biologic drugs intended to treat complex disease expands, the typical timeline for drug development seems to be shortening more frequently and with more intensity. There are many drivers to accelerate development.

Alcami’s St. Louis, Missouri Center of Excellence for advanced analytical testing was issued a Certificate of Compliance by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) Tuesday, April 23, 2019, following the facility’s recent successful Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) inspection. Certification confirms the site is compliant with GMP laboratory storage and testing practices, and enables the laboratory to process more commercial products for the European Union (EU). The outcome reflects the company’s unwavering commitments to quality, reliability, responsible operations, and strict adherence to regulatory compliance.

The new elemental impurities regulations stress the importance of controlling all sources of elemental impurities in drug products. The regulations also impact all upcoming and current commercial drug products for human use. To comply with these regulations, it is critical to have an efficient, cost-effective, and agency-accepted approach.

Elemental impurities can contaminate or leach into a drug product from multiple sources (i.e. drug substance, excipients, water, equipment, and container closure systems), therefore, it is no longer acceptable to monitor the inlet raw materials only. A conservative risk-based approach is recommended, which should address all potential sources of elemental impurities. If it can be demonstrated that the elemental impurities present in the drug product are under control (less than the control threshold for three lots), then analysis at release is not needed. 

The US Orphan Drug Act of 1983 characterizes an orphan disease as a rare medical condition that affects a population of fewer than 200,000 people. Rare diseases have various causes— most notably, genetics. However, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) states, “many rare diseases, including infections, some rare cancers, and some autoimmune diseases, are not inherited. While researchers are learning more each year, the exact cause of many rare diseases is still unknown” (NIH, 2017).

The term “orphan disease” resulted from pharmaceutical companies not having the resources to design and scale up formulations to treat these diseases, due to the lack of financial support for such highly specialized programs. The Orphan Drug Act (ODA) allows for the necessary financial backing of pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments for rare diseases (NIH, 2017), giving special status to a drug or biological product (drug) upon request of a sponsor. This status is referred to as orphan designation or orphan status.

Many pharmaceutical manufacturers are concerned about label design and placement to accommodate a serialized label. These are, of course, very legitimate concerns. However, there are much more complex issues at hand, including the importance of standardization, scaling information technology infrastructure, agility to accommodate regulatory changes, and data security.

Why Serialization Matters
The first objective of any pharmaceutical company is to deliver safe and effective medicines to patients. While historically there have been methods to provide product visibility and control along the supply chain, the processes have been highly manual, with paper-based record keeping being the prevalent modality.

Controlled drug substances are scheduled based on medical use in treatment, potential for abuse, and dependence caused if abused— the lower the control schedule the more potential for abuse. The process to obtain approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for Schedule I-V controlled substances and List I chemicals licensing involves intricacy and a detailed timeline of approvals. This article will discuss the background of controlled substance applications and how to successfully work with the DEA.

Signed into law on January 4, 1983, the Orphan Drug Act (ODA) allows for granting special status to a drug or biological product (drug) to treat a rare disease or condition upon request of a sponsor. This status is referred to as orphan designation, or orphan status. For a drug to qualify for orphan designation, both the drug and the disease or condition must meet certain criteria specified in the ODA and US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) implementing regulations per 21 CFR Part 316. The FDA Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) evaluates the scientific and clinical data submission from sponsors to identify and designate products as promising for rare diseases or conditions.

Join Alcami and the Division of Pharmacy Professional Development at UW-Madison for a webinar: Successful Application of the New Elemental Impurities Regulation.

The recent changes to the elemental impurities regulation guidelines increase the level of control necessary in testing for heavy metals in pharmaceutical and biotherapeutic products. The use of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) instrumentation is considered the ideal method to determine elemental impurities present in drug products and raw materials. This approach has been proven to be accurate, sensitive, linear, and satisfactory to include in filing reports.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft guidance listing the enforcement of product identifiers under the Drug Supply Chain Security Act.  Specifically, this draft guidance addresses the requirement in section 582(b)(2) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) (21 U.S.C. 360eee-1(b)(2)) that manufacturers “affix or imprint a product identifier to each package and homogenous case of a product intended to be introduced in a transaction into commerce” beginning no later than November 27, 2017.  Ultimately, the FDA recognized the massive undertaking of such a requirement and extended the deadline to November 26, 2018.

Alcami began implementing serialization in 2015 to achieve the aggressive timelines and develop the necessary documentation needed to meet compliance.

This case study shows how Alcami has successfully transferred clients into the new serialization program.