Lyophilization Cycle Development
PCI is uniquely positioned to both develop your lyophilization cycle or optimize your existing cycle providing you with a commercially desirable yet economical process.
Through the acquisition of LSNE, we are market leaders, offering one of the largest lyophilization capacities in the industry with over 30 lyophilizers.
Our Lyophilization Cycle Development and Optimization Services include:
- Thermal Characterization
Cycle development begins with understanding the critical temperatures of the formulation. Once we have determined the thermal properties of your formulated product, we use the Glass Transition (Tg), Eutectic Temperature (Te), Collapse Temperature (Tc) and Re-crystallization Temperature (Tcry) data to develop the nominal drying conditions for the lyophilization cycle parameters.
- Intentional Collapse Studies
To deliver a commercially robust lyophilization process and ensure the finished product consistently meets the finished product CQAs at release, we perform a “Intentional Collapse Study” (ICS) during the final stages of lyophilization development. The Process Development team will perform the ICS study to intentionally collapse the product to fully understand the potential points of failure in the lyophilization cycle.
- Cycle Optimization
Challenging the nominal lyophilization cycle parameters, we will specifically optimize the lyophilization cycle for your product, optimizing for low residual moisture, cake appearance, reconstitution, and total run time. Optimizing the cycle for total run time can lead to cost efficiencies over the lifecycle of your product.
- Toxicology Batches
One important step of your clinical program will be the required toxicology studies. PCI is able to produce toxicology material supplying you with material to support preclinical and your IND submission.
- Solvent Lyophilization
If your manufacturing process requires the aid of organic solvents to increase solubility, we can evaluate such solvents as tert-butyl alcohol, acetonitrile, DMSO, or ethanol. We have the experience to safely develop and transfer the manufacturing processes to our cGMP manufacturing facilities and work closely with our Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) team to determine the volumes we can safely handle.
- Conserving Valuable Drug Substance
If limited material is available for cycle development, we can develop an experimental plan based on the available API. By establishing the testing plan for development activities, we can use a placebo or small amounts of drug substance in the early stage feasibility before the final confirmatory lyophilization runs.
With scale-up, transfer to cGMP manufacturing and the future of your life-changing therapy in mind, our Process Development team deliver robust lyophilization cycles with parameters that are transferable to any large scale freeze-dryer every time.
Analytical Testing
Our in-house GMP analytical laboratories provide full analytical testing services for your lyophilization cycle development programs.
Testing capabilities include:
- Analytical & microbiological testing
- In-process & release testing
- ICH stability & Q1B photostability
- Analytical method development
- Method transfers & phase appropriate validation