The pharmaceutical industry relies on crystallisation experiments to study impurities and assess product quality. The problem is, it faces significant challenges in the availability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), forcing it to conduct frequent and complex crystallisation experiments with less material. Here, Dr. Carmen Guguta, global head of business development and marketing at Technobis Crystallization Systems, explores how laboratories can do more complex experiments with small amounts of material by using benchtop analytical technology.
Key insights:
- Geopolitical factors and the logistical effects of Brexit, have driven up manufacturing and transport costs, placing an ever-heavier burden on laboratory research budgets.
- By reducing the mass of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) required in experiments, scientists can free up more of their vital funding for other spending.
- If laboratories were to upgrade their workflow using innovative benchtop equipment, running multiple, complex experiments simultaneously with small sample sizes would become easy.
For years, laboratories have been able to access cheaper raw materials from across the world, but recent disruptions have made this more difficult. For example, a report by the European Parliament concluded that 60 to 80% of APIs are manufactured in India or China. However, pandemic travel restrictions across these regions, as well as other geopolitical issues like Brexit and the Ukraine-Russia conflict, have disrupted the supply of these materials, forcing many laboratories to look elsewhere.