Scaling up controlled nucleation in freeze drying: Translating vacuum-induced surface freezing from laboratory to GMP.

The freezing step often causes batch inhomogeneity and issues during freeze drying process transfer. The nucleation temperature at which the first ice is formed during freezing differs from vial to vial, and significantly between scales. To solve this issue, Controlled Ice Nucleation techniques can be applied to induce ice nucleation at a defined product temperature across the whole batch.

Optimization of continuous spin-freeze-drying: The role of spin-freezing on quality attributes and drying efficiency of a model peptide formulation.

Continuous spin-freeze-drying is an innovative pharmaceutical manufacturing approach offering real-time monitoring and control at the individual vial level, unlike conventional batch lyophilization. A central feature of this technology is spin-freezing, which involves rapidly spinning liquid-filled vials under a precisely controlled cold gas flow, resulting in a thin, uniform frozen product layer. Using a model peptide formulation, we investigated the impact of different cooling and crystallization rates on quality attributes (QA) and primary drying duration.

100% Control of Controlled Ice Nucleation Vials by Camera-Supported Optical Inspection in Freeze-Drying.

Freeze-drying is the drying technology of choice for sensitive biological drugs. On the one side, it is admired for its suitability for the stabilization of sensitive molecules. On the other side, it is a time-consuming production step posing challenges in process development and technology transfer.