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Press Release / Jun 18, 2024

Hovione Unveils New Continuous Tableting Line at Lisbon R&D Centre

Hovione is proud to announce the opening of a state-of-the-art continuous tableting (CT) line at its R&D Center in Lisbon.

Press Release - CT Line RD Lumiar | Hovione

Lisbon, Portugal: Hovione, the specialist integrated CDMO and leader in spray drying and particle engineering, is proud to announce the opening of a state-of-the-art continuous tableting (CT) line at its R&D Center in Lisbon.  

The new line is the result of the partnership with GEA, a global leader in process technology for the pharmaceutical industry. Since announcing their partnership in 2022, Hovione and GEA have worked to advance continuous tableting technology. Their collaboration seeks to boost the adoption of continuous tableting by offering increased capacity, flexibility, standardized equipment, improved quality, and enhanced efficiency. Together, they have shown that continuous tableting can become a more accessible technology.

This new R&D line is the only one of its kind in the world and perfectly replicates the most critical components of Hovione´s state-of-the-art commercial CT line in Loures, Portugal. It also offers a high degree of flexibility in throughput and can handle highly potent Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API).

“With this new line, we will be able to optimize operating conditions with minimum amounts of API and provide a higher technical certainty when transferring from development to commercial scale”, said Jaime Del Campo, Head of R&D Services at Hovione. “The flexibility of the rig and the real-time process data monitoring capabilities contribute to a more agile design and upscaling experience.”

The new CT line at Hovione's Lisbon R&D center is now fully operational and ready to support both existing and new projects. This investment reinforces Hovione's global reputation in pharmaceutical manufacturing and highlights the company's commitment to delivering innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of the industry and support quicker and more efficient market launches. 

 

About Hovione

Hovione is an international company with over 60 years of experience in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing operations. As a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) it has a fully integrated offering of services for drug substances, drug product intermediates and drug products. The company has four FDA inspected sites in the USA, Portugal, Ireland and China and development laboratories in Lisbon, Portugal and New Jersey, USA. Hovione provides pharmaceutical customers services for the development and compliant manufactureof innovative drugs, including highly potent compounds, and customized product solutions across the entire drug life cycle. In the inhalation area, Hovione offers a complete range of services, from API, formulation development and manufacturing, capsule filling and devices.  
 
Hovione's culture is based on innovation, quality and dependability. Hovione is a member of Rx-360, EFCG and participates actively in industry quality improvement initiatives to lead new global industry standards.

 

 

Learn more about Continuous Tableting for Drug Product

 

 

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With key expansions coming to fruition on either side of the pond, specialist CDMO Hovione is making sure that drugmakers can access its particle engineering expertise across multiple geographies.  That flexibility will be key for the Portugal-based company in the coming years as the pharmaceutical industry continues to embrace more regional supply chains. In a recent interview, Hovione's David Basile, VP of technical operations for the Americas, discussed this trend and the manufacturer's expansion project, which is set to come online in New Jersey next month.  In the coming weeks, Hovione plans to debut a new spray drying expansion at its campus in East Windsor, New Jersey. The company has invested $100 million to expand its campus, including new construction and the acquisition of an additional facility and greenfield land.  Specifically, one of two pharmaceutical spray drying-3 units, or PSD-3 units, will come online in the coming weeks to tackle amorphous active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and amorphous solid dispersions, according to the company. With some 80% of new small molecules in development insoluble in water, Hovione’s particle engineering and amorphous solid dispersion platform helps medicine developers improve the solubility, bioavailability, and, in some cases, the stability of their drug candidates, Basile said.  The company boasts spray dryers from the lab scale to PSD3 at its original facility in East Windsor, in addition to the pair of large-scale machines about to be activated at the campus' new facility.  “We’re going for a single, unified site with capabilities across the campus to do drug substance through finished drug product under one governance and quality system,” - Basile told Fierce.   Read the full article at FiercePharma.com

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