Press Room

News / Jul 03, 2017

Diane Villax receives Scientific Merit Medal

National Science and Technology Meeting, Science 2017, in Lisbon, Portugal

Diane Villax Award Scientific Merit Medal | Hovione

Diane Villax, Founder Chairman, received the Scientific Merit Medal, from the Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal, Manuel Heitor, at the opening session of the National Science and Technology Meeting, Science 2017, in Lisbon, Portugal.

The scientific merit medal rewards national or foreign individuals who, due to their outstanding professional qualities and the fulfillment of their duties, have made a valuable and exceptional contribution to the development of science or scientific culture in Portugal.

«It is for me a great honour to represent Hovione on this occasion and to see that our original project has continued and grown and is today recognized at the highest levels. I would like to share and dedicate this moment to my family and to all of Hovione’s Team Members, and especially to the memory of my husband Ivan, who 58 years ago was a visionary and believed that it was possible to create in Portugal an innovative, research-based company» said Diane Villax after the ceremony.

 

Watch Diane Villax interview (in Portuguese):

Diane Villax receives Scientific Merit Medal Video | Hovione

 

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Continuous Tableting (CT) is defined as continuous manufacturing of oral dose drugs, specifically tablets. As per ICH's Q13 definition1, a continuous manufacturing process in the pharmaceutical industry comprises at least two unit operations integrated from a mechanical and software perspective. There is a wide combination of possible CT process configurations that are dependent on the needs of the intended product formulation and each of the individual unit operations that constitute the process train can be continuous, semi-continuous, or batch processes. The typical manufacturing processes for tablet formulation are direct compression (DC), dry granulation (DG) and wet granulation (WG)2 - details on these manufacturing processes are beyond the scope of this article, so the interested reader is directed to relevant literature. The actual implementation of CT technology in a facility can broadly vary depending on the level of desired integration and automation. Process trains can be designed to be flexible and converted between multiple configurations (e.g. continuous DC, DG and WG), controlled by the end user from one single software and within a single clean room. The other possibility would be for subsections of the CT process to be divided into multiple clean rooms where inprocess materials are transferred between suites via a bin-to-bin approach (e.g. a granulation suite to prepare granules from raw materials followed by continuous DC (CDC) to blend the granules and produce tablets). The level of automation and instrumentation designed into the CT process (typically involving Process Analytical Technologies, PAT) can open the possibility to implement sophisticated control strategies. Key components of a control strategy that need to be considered for CT are material tracking and genealogy, knowledge of the residence time distribution (RTD), and in-process controls (spectroscopic and/or soft sensors based on process parameters). Holistically, these control strategy elements enable the implementation of a material diversion strategy to automatically divert out of specification material from the process. In their most advanced form, control strategies may also enable real time release testing (RTRt) of the final tablet drug product and reduce the off-line analytical burden and the number of operators needed to manage the process.   Read the full article at gmp-journal.com  

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