32 Pharmaceutical Technology
®
Trends in Manufacturing eBook May 2023 PharmTech.com
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A
variety of topics and products were show-
cased a INTERPHEX 2023, which was held
in New York City from April 25–27, 2023.
The editors of Pharmaceutical Technology
®
were on hand to moderate sessions and report on the
latest news. The following are some highlights from
this year's event.
Messenger RNA
Messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccines have been
largely optimized for stability, structure, and delivery.
Fundamentally, however, the industry is at the early
stages of unraveling what similarities and differences
can be taken advantage of for mRNA modalities in on-
cology, infections disease, or neural degeneration indi-
cations. This new pioneering phase of mRNA is loaded
with potential, but also obstacles and false dawns.
Speakers at a Keynote Series session, mRNA Suppli-
er-developer Relationships and Technical Advances (1),
represented major stakeholders in both the success-
ful vaccines, and also the new areas of endeavor. In
the session introduction, mention was made about
progress toward a global alliance beginning to take
shape for the field, named the "Alliance for mRNA
Medicine," which shows how far the field has devel-
oped in a commercial sense and therapeutic sense, in
just the past few years.
Phil Challis, vice-president of product development
at eTheRNA, discussed four of the major challenges
in working with mRNA therapeutics: what makes a
good RNA construct; making RNA more tolerable;
storage and distribution of lipid nanoparticles; and
drug delivery approaches.
Ulrich Blaschke, vice-president Technical Devel-
opment at BioNTech SE, focused his talk more on the
history of the pandemic, milestones in inventing and
developing a product ready for manufacturing scaleup,
and some pertinent commercial aspects that helped
Highlights from
INTERPHEX 2023
The Editors of
Pharmaceutical Technology
Sessions at INTERPHEX 2023 touched on a
variety of topics including organ on a chip,
continuous manufacturing, and messenger RNA technology.
