Scalable technology for the extraction of pharmaceutics: outcomes from a 3 year collaborative industry/academia research programme.

This paper reports on some of the key outcomes of a 3 year £1.5m Technology Strategy Board (TSB) funded research programme to develop a small footprint, versatile, counter-current chromatography purification technology and methodology which can be operated at a range of scales in both batch and continuous modes and that can be inserted into existing process plant and systems. Our consortium, integrates technology providers (Dynamic Extractions) and the scientific development team (Brunel) with end user needs (GSK & Pfizer), addressing major production challenges aimed at providing flexible, low capital platform technology driving substantial cost efficiency in both drug development and drug manufacturing processes.

Scalable Technology for the Extraction of Pharmaceutics (STEP): the transition from academic knowhow to industrial reality.

This paper addresses the technological readiness of counter-current chromatography (CCC) instruments to become platform technology for the pharmaceutical industry. It charts the development of the prototype technology since its inception in 1966, through conceptual improvements in the 1980s that led to higher speed separations in hours as opposed to days. It then describes the engineering improvements that have led to the development of high performance counter-current chromatography with the potential for scale-up to process scale for manufacturing products in industry with separation times in minutes rather than hours.

Sewage effluent clean-up reduces phosphorus but not phytoplankton in lowland chalk stream (River Kennet, UK) impacted by water mixing from adjacent canal.

Information is provided on phosphorus in the River Kennet and the adjacent Kennet and Avon Canal in southern England to assess their interactions and the changes following phosphorus reductions in sewage treatment work (STW) effluent inputs. A step reduction in soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) concentration within the effluent (5 to 13 fold) was observed from several STWs discharging to the river in the mid-2000s. This translated to over halving of SRP concentrations within the lower Kennet.

Feasibility of scaling from pilot to process scale.

The pharmaceutical industry is looking for new technology that is easy to scale up from analytical to process scale and is cheap and reliable to operate. Large scale counter-current chromatography is an emerging technology that could provide this advance, but little was known about the key variables affecting scale-up. This paper investigates two such variables: the rotor radius and the tubing bore.

Counter-current chromatography separation scaled up from an analytical column to a production column.

An analytical separation was performed on an analytical J-type counter-current chromatography (CCC) instrument using a 5.4 ml column, with a 1 ml/min mobile phase flow rate. This separation had a resolution of 0.