In bioprocessing, many experts talk about the advantages of single-use technology, but making it work requires access to the necessary tools—and lots of them. That’s what MilliporeSigma decided to address with its Mobius® single-use assemblies.
These “assemblies provide flexible, customized single-use solutions to accelerate pharmaceutical drug development and manufacturing,” said company spokesperson Karen Tiano. “This is a critical component in the supply chain for the production of vaccines and medications around the world.”
Instead of buying a collection of parts to get started in single-use, MilliporeSigma’s assembly provides everything a bioprocessor requires: bags, tubing, connectors, and filters, she added.
“These ready-to-use assemblies allow the development and production of products in a wide range of sizes and for a variety of diseases,” Tiano explained.
Plus, MilliporeSigma keeps making more of these assemblies: 1,500 a week a decade ago and now 12,000 a week in the company’s manufacturing facility in Danvers, MA. That adds up to almost 625,000 assemblies in a year. That level of manufacturing reflects the growing demand in the market, continued Tiano.
“We have seen a steady increase in the adoption of this technology by the biopharmaceutical industry,” she said. “The widespread utilization of single-use filter cartridges and capsules paved the way for acceptance of single-use bags and assemblies.”
The application of single-use methods covers the entire lifespan of a therapy.
“It is not uncommon to see new therapies developed using entirely single-use processes—everything from media and buffer preparation to drug-substance transportation and drug-product filling,” Tiano pointed out. “MilliporeSigma’s major technology changes and innovations have been driven by end-user needs, such as to aseptically connect and disconnect single-use systems, automatically monitor, control and collect data from the process and the requirement for more robust, compatible and clean films and components to support critical processing applications.”
A process ends up as more than the sum of the parts, but bioprocessors need the right parts—sometimes assemblies of them—to complete the process.
