Emmanuel Abate, president Genomic Medicine and head of Sustainability, Cytiva, reflects on the developments of the biotech industry in 2022 and despite the manufacturing challenges that remain, the focus on sustainable solutions must not be ignored.
Key insights:
- mRNA manufacturing has not yet been standardised, leading to challenges with operations, personnel, process, quality control, and contamination.
- Sustainability should be built into the product lifecycle from the start through to end of life, one example is advanced recycling.
- In gene therapy, implementing an integrated solution is important to not only optimise each unit of operation, but could reduce process steps.
2022 was another major year for the biotechnology industry. Although nations were slowly starting to emerge from two years of public health measures related to COVID, the science and innovation never stopped. In 2020, the scientific community cracked the code on mRNA technology and has since been applying that knowledge to try and solve other global health challenges.