GMP News - Pharmaceutical Technology

In May, the FDA published a Warning Letter to a US American sterile manufacturer of ophthalmic drugs which highlights serious deficiencies, especially in sterile production and in the general understanding of GMP. Read more here.

Due to the deficiencies discovered during an inspection performed in July 2018, the US FDA has now issued a Warning Letter to a US pharmaceutical manufacturer of homeopathic drug products. Microbiological impurities in the products and the water used to manufacture the medicinal products are an essential aspect of the complaint.

In March, the American authority FDA issued a Warning Letter to a US pharmaceutical manufacturer due to numerous violations of GMP. Among other things, inadequate cleaning of the equipment, errors in the stability studies as well as in contamination control were found.

The most common method of preventing microbiological contamination in a water system is thermal sanitisation. There are systems in which the pharmaceutical water is stored hot and systems that are heated cyclically to an elevated, germicidal temperature. However, excessive temperatures not only increase costs, they can also damage the materials. Read more here.

In February 2019, the FDA published a new draft guideline that addresses quality aspects of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing. It covers topics related to development, process validation, marketing authorisation and routine production.

In June 2018 already, the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) announced the coming issuance of a new ICH Guideline on continuous manufacturing. Now, the ICH has released further news about the planned content of the new guideline ICH Q13.