Ahead of scale-up, Dr. Sigurd Buchholz and Dr. Christian Severins (left to right) test the process in a small continuous active substance production plant.
Drugs from the conveyor belt – barely conceivable in the past, but Bayer’s research scientists are currently testing a new way of making a substance that might be very effective in treating cancer. In future, it might be possible to complete all the five steps needed to synthesize this substance in a continuous process, in the same way that food is made: raw materials enter at one end and the finished product leaves the plant at the other. This would speed up drug manufacture, making it more efficient and ultimately also helping patients.
A revolution in drugs production
The new process is a revolution in the pharmaceutical industry: in the past, active substances were produced gradually in small batches. Each step in synthesis in this batch processing method had its own manufacturing procedure, which dictated how raw materials and intermediate products interact with each other. Read more here about what continuous production means for the new cancer drug and what other benefits it has to offer for drug manufacture.