Abstract

Continuous Pharmaceutical Manufacturing (CPM) is a new production paradigm with a strong potential to improve process efficiency while also suppressing R&D and operating costs, thus fostering competitiveness greatly. Novel pharmaceutical production lines can thus be constructed if continuous organic flow synthesis routes are available, via ensuring Quality by Design (QbD), systematic model-based optimisation and use of Process Analytical Technology (PAT). Microreactor and microseparator engineering appears particularly advantageous from a design viewpoint in this high-value and often low-capacity context, both at pilot-plant as well at full-production scale, and it can be combined with several proven continuous downstream formulation technologies, facilitating the reduction of organic waste emissions and environmental footprint. Full-scale prototype CPM lines have recently been constructed as a result of novel "telescoping" chemical syntheses, and technoeconomic evaluations published by academic as well as corporate research groups are extremely encouraging toward establishing business cases for CPM.

This talk will discuss:

• The current state of the art and the recent major advances in CPM technology and production cost suppression
• How established as well as novel design methods can have a pivotal effect toward CPM plant deployment
• The relative economic potential of CPM production lines in comparison to established batch manufacturing

Biography

Dimitrios Gerogiorgis holds a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a MSc in Electrical & Computer Engineering and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. He held a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Imperial College London, served as a Novartis-MIT Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Continuous Manufacturing in Cambridge, MA and developed materials technologies at NTUA, Athens. He is currently a Lecturer in IMP, and his research interests are in the area of mathematical modelling, process simulation and systematic optimisation of chemical processes with explicit economic objectives, with particular emphasis on pharmaceuticals, energy and materials.