Pharma Seeks Long Tail Of Flexible Manufacturing

By Rebecca Stauffer, PDA

The pharmaceutical industry is at the cutting edge in terms of types of products and technologies offered and under development. The last 30 years has seen the biopharm boom, and most recently, the marriage of therapies with high-tech delivery systems, particularly prefilled syringes and other injection devices. The industry is moving into new areas of advanced therapies with personalized medicine, stem cells, nanotech and 3-D printing (in fact, the U.S. FDA approved the first 3-D printed pill last year)¹.

But do the manufacturing systems used to produce these products showcase the state-of-the art in manufacturing?