The modern age of blood transfusion began after the Second World War, as detailed in Douglas Starr’s book, Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce. During the war, it became apparent that early and aggressive medical treatment utilizing whole blood or plasma could increase the chances of survival for military personnel wounded in combat. In the United States, a national program to encourage blood donation was created to provide the needed blood, which was then shipped as whole blood or plasma to war zones. After the war, physicians were eager to apply surgical advances developed on and off the battlefield to the care of the general population. Because these advances relied on blood transfusion, for the public to realize their benefit, adequate supplies of whole blood and blood components needed to be available to hospitals across the country. This was often not the case…
Tag: <span>GMP</span>
Xcyte Therapies has recently introduced a bioreactor-based process for the GMP manufacture of autologous activated T cells, Xcellerated T Cells™, for clinical trials. Using a single customized disposable 20-L Cellbag™ with a working volume of 10 L on a customized Wave Bioreactor platform (Wave Biotech, Bridgewater, NJ), the Xcellerate™ III Process has supplanted the 60-L static Xcellerate II Process that used 60 bags cultured in a standard incubator. Compared to the Xcellerate II™ Process, the Xcellerate III Process significantly reduces the overall labor, the number of culture containers, bag spikes, and sterile connections required, as well as reducing the process volume and the cost of goods, while more than quadrupling the final cell density and doubling the facility capacity. These process improvements are achieved without compromising final product composition or quality…
Within the United States, greater than 90% of the available transfusible blood products are collected, processed, and distributed by regional blood centers. The remaining blood products are collected by hospital-based blood banks and are usually provided only to patients in the collecting facility. The “region” in which a blood center offers services (i.e., collecting blood from volunteer donors and providing blood components to healthcare facilities), is usually an arbitrarily and independently defined group of contiguous counties surrounding a major metropolitan area. However, the borders of the region can be elastic and easily altered by gaining or losing access to donor groups or customers. It is not uncommon for a geographic area to be simultaneously “claimed” by neighboring competing blood centers. America’s Blood Centers (ABC) is a not-for-profit trade organization that provides services and advocacy for independent not-for-profit regional blood centers. ABC’s seventy-five members collect approximately 45% of the country’s blood products…
Contract manufacturing of recombinant protein drugs and vaccines, as well as other biopharmaceuticals, has been the focus of considerable interest during the past decade. Fueled by a strong clinical development pipeline, primary manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals on a contract basis has attracted multinational industrial concerns willing to invest on the promise of potentially higher returns than are experienced in the production of traditional small molecule drugs. Biopharmaceutical contract manufacturers have made significant contributions to the development and subsequent commercialization of a few highly successful products. However, despite strong growth, consistent profitability has been elusive. The market has changed overr the past decade as customer projects progressed from process development through market launch. Now that several preeminent market players have successfully made the difficult transition from clinical to commercial supplier, what has been learned and how is the market expected to evolve over the next five years?…