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42 Pharmaceutical Technology ® | BioPharm International ® Trends in Manufacturing May 2025 PharmTech.com supplying this, this adds a lot more efficiency, be- cause now, instead of making lower volumes of mul- tiple part numbers, you can make higher volumes of lower part numbers." Sustainability for customer and company The term might seem counterintuitive, but single use is playing an increasingly large role in sustain- able practices sought after in countless laboratories. Speaking on the topic of sustainability in manufac- turing were Christopher Murphy, director of Global Business Development and Ser vice Customer Sup- por t at Env i ron ment a l Specia lt ies, a nd M ichael Franco, global sales director at PSG Biotech. Murphy discussed how walk-in chambers are crit- ical infrastructure in pharmaceutical facilities, as they are primarily used for product storage under highly controlled environmental conditions, such as temperature and/or humidity (4). "Proper design of a walk-in chamber can contrib- ute to sustainable practices," Murphy said. "It is no secret that a walk-in room, because of the exacting conditions it has to create, can be an energy hog. It can be a drain on utilities, but if properly designed, and if the manufacturer asks the correct questions about the use of the space, then it can be engineered in a way t hat m inim izes t hat impact and r uns at optimum performance. Also, if it is designed and constructed with qualit y to last for decades, then you cut down on waste for replacement of the cham- ber. You can reduce spare parts requirements from a repair perspective. So, sustainability, in our case, would be minimizing impact on utilities and reduc- ing waste for the facility." For Franco, customer demands for improved bio- processing applications are driving both innovation and concentration on sustainability. He explained recent advancements in f low sensor technology, and how t h is tech nolog y is evolv ing to help improve measurement accuracy as drug production becomes more expensive and precise. "In terms of sustainabilit y, there's less need for inventor y, and t he sensor can be used for longer, because it can be operated in different process con- ditions," Franco said (5). "Looking in terms of the f uture, we're adding more digital communication platforms so customers can com mun icate to t he sensors i n d i f ferent ways, ma k i ng sure t hat t he sensors talk to pumps, and to get a really good per- formance between the two. So, those are the things that probably going to be asked more and more for from customers." AI and automated practices evolving Thomas de Beer, co-founder and CEO of RheaVita, said one particular and ongoing hurdle in the path of innovation is the amount of regulator y require- ments compan ies must ad here to, wh i le keeping abreast of any changes in those standards. "The pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, which makes it pretty difficult to innovate—not dif- ficult, but it makes it slow to innovate, especially new ma nufac t ur i ng tech nolog ies," de Beer sa id, however noting that there are built-in opportunities to innovate, for those who are ready and willing to adapt (6). "The regulators themselves, they started stimulating the pharmaceutical industr y to inno- vate. They published several guidelines on process a na ly t ics and process a na ly t ica l tech nolog y, but also on continuous manufacturing ... At the same time, you also see new types of drug products com- ing up. And these new types of drug products, they become more and more complex. They require more f lexible manufacturing." Kerr y Love, co-founder and CEO of t he biotech- nology company Sunf lower Therapeutics, said con- tinuous approaches are a natural fit for automation. "When you use automation in general, you make something that's usually highly complex with a lot of handoffs and transitions much less complicated, particularly in continuous bioprocessing," she ex- plained (7). "That's actually a great place for auto- mat ion, because a l ready you're si mpl i f y i ng un it operat ions a nd ma k i ng i nter faces bet ween u n it operations t hat of tentimes haven't been t here in the past. That's a great way to then layer automa- tion on top of that and ultimately get to walk-away solutions." How prof ic ient es t abl i shed compa n ies a re at adapting many of their time-honored processes to implement new types of workf lows, not only in the area of automation but also considering the swif t rise of AI in almost every facet of life in the past sev- eral years, may be the key to continued success in manufacturing. Love said access to labor is a basic reason why au- tomation has increased. "Most kind of legacy biomanufacturing uses really large facilities that have highly complex operations and use literally thousands of highly skilled workers to operate and to move through those unit opera- tions and transitions to work toward the product of interest," she said. "Automation is so important by bringing a way for a maybe a workforce that has less of a background in those expertises to come and actually participate in high-value manufacturing." And the learning curve on AI has been quick, said Peter Sarvey, head of Sales for Automation NTH, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't immediately paid dividends. "If I think about the last few years, specifically, the last two, AI has been implemented on the vision side INDUSTRY TRENDS