Innovation With Single-Use: Merck Calls For Collaboration To Overcome Challenges

As the industry—and Merck—sees its pipelines expanding into these more targeted areas of treatment, the call for flexibility and speed gets even louder. Many feel an answer to this is single-use technology (SUT). SUT, as many are aware, offers significant benefits to biomanufacturers, such as reduced cleaning requirements, a smaller footprint, less capital investment, more flexibility, and reduced risk of cross-contamination. At Merck, there has been a continued momentum of sales in biologics and vaccines over the last 15 years. However, up until six years ago, we had not fully explored SUT or its full potential implementation in our facilities. That is, until an outside industry expert gave us the brutally honest assessment that we were “behind” when it came to SUT. To address this head-on, thought leaders from various departments within Merck coalesced into a network of single-use advocates who shared the common goal of facilitating the implementation of SUT at our company. This group became known as the Merck Single-Use Network, or SUN.