Three US and three European manufacturing plants have been selected as
category winners for the annual Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) out of 27
entries.
The category winners are Biogen Idec, Roche, Medimmune, Merck &
Co, Morphotek and Novartis, with
the overall victor due to be announced at the International Society for
Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) annual meeting later this year.
Biogen Idec has won the Facility Integration category for its flexible volume
manufacturing (FVM) project at its plant in Research Triangle Park, North
Carolina, US. The project centred on the creation of an adaptable platform for
making small and large-volume batches of material intended for clinical trials,
and features a hybrid network of fixed and single-use equipment.
Roche took first place in the Project Execution category for its Technical
Research and Development (TR&D) Building 97 in Basel, Switzerland, which
was set up to consolidate the Roche research and development groups for oral
solid dosage and liquid parenteral dosage forms for clinical studies into one
facility.
AstraZeneca unit MedImmune won the Equipment Innovation award for its UK Automation Upgrade Project
in Speke, Liverpool, UK, which the FOYA panel said drives "a paradigm
shift in egg-based vaccine manufacturing". The MedImmune team
adopted a system engineering methodology to redesign each discrete processing
step into a fully integrated and automated production train, boosting yields by
15% whilst cutting labour requirements and wastage.
Merck & Co was given the
honours in the Operational Excellence category for its Vaccine
and Biologics Sterile Facility (VBSF) Project in Carlow, Ireland, its first
green-field sterile processing facility built outside the US. The plant is
designed to support Merck's long-range biologics and vaccine pipeline.
Eisai subsidiary Morphotek has
won the Sustainability category for its pilot plant in Exton, Pennsylvania, US, a
brownfield development which reclaimed previously contaminated land and
features an array of sustainable features, including solar power, water
conservation and a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system
that is 90% more efficient than traditional systems.
Finally,
Novartis has taken the award for Process Innovation for its US flu cell culture
facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. The plant uses a deep tank
mammalian cell culture technology to make the vaccines rather than conventional
egg-based systems.
The overall Facility of the
Year award will be presented at ISPE's annual meeting on 3-6 November in
Washington DC.