Felicitas Guth

Innovating for the future of pharmaceuticals

The world of pharmaceutical manufacturing is moving at a surprising speed. The market for pharmaceuticals has grown rapidly in the last two decades, and pharma revenues worldwide totalled 1.27$ trillion in 2021.

The pharmaceutical industry is also uniquely dependant on research and development, and it’s common for companies to reinvest 20 per-cent or more of their revenue in R&D projects to develop new medicines and innovations.

For manufacturers creating these medicines, the importance of having access to a high-quality supplier cannot be underestimated. At BASF Pharma Solutions, we work extensively to deliver the most innovative products and services for our customers to enable more efficient, robust, sustainable, and cost-effective drug manufacturing and delivery.

Felicitas Guth, Head of Development at BASF Pharma Solutions, has over 20 years of experience working with pharmaceutical excipients at BASF and has helped invent numerous solutions for the company. We spoke to her to learn about how BASF works to innovate in this space, developing industry trends, and what the future holds for the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.

Q: In your experience, what new or upcoming trends do you see in the pharmaceutical world, and how can BASF help customer prepare for these trends?

Felicitas: We’re seeing a few key trends in pharmaceuticals. First, innovative medicines and drug delivery systems have become more readily available, and new materials and technologies play an important role in that. Global access to medicine is expanding, and due to the aging population and growing access to medicine in emerging markets, medicines are being made available to a broader percentage of the global population.

The second trend is the pandemic and subsequent supply chain disruptions, which have presented immediate challenges to the industry.

To prepare for these trends, BASF helps to simplify and speed up formulation development to make drug product manufacturing more effective, robust, and sustainable. We work closely with our customers to help them solve their formulation challenges and differentiate with functional excipients, optimize their cost position, and develop more sustainable solutions.

Q: Why is innovation so important in pharmaceutical manufacturing?

Felicitas: New active ingredients and formats bring new physical and chemical properties or formulation needs that have not been addressed before and will likely require new routes of application or materials. Standard excipients and technologies, in some cases, is not a good enough solution.

Tomorrow's formulation problems cannot always be solved with yesterday's excipients and need innovative materials, which BASF can supply our customers with.

Q: How can new or improved excipients and surfactants help in this respect?

Felicitas: BASF is one of very few companies that invest in the development of innovative excipients. New or improved excipients can help improve the solubility and oral bioavailability of small molecules, while new or improved surfactants can increase the formulation stability of biologics including vaccines and therapeutic antibodies, which is a new format that is used for targeted therapies.

New innovations in both excipients and surfactants can result in more effective medicines for patients.

Q: What are some of these novel excipients, and what sets them apart?

Felicitas: Over the last two decades, we have built a track record of launching improved products, new co-processed excipients and novel excipients. One of these is the new polymer Soluplus®, which is the first polymeric solubilizer and also matrix forming polymer. It helps increase the solubility and the oral bioavailability of difficult-to-formulate active ingredients. In Fact, Soluplus has just been accepted by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in to the FDA Novel Excipient Pilot Program.

Another is Kolliphor® P 188 Bio, a processing aid that was designed for protection against sheer stress in biologic drug manufacturing processes, thereby lowering manufacturing risk through consistent performance.

Finally, we have Kollitab™ DC 87 L, which is the first lactose based all-in-one excipient containing all the ingredients needed to make a tablet. With this new product, our aim is to make tablet development fast and easy, and to enable robust large scale manufacturing processes. As a readily usable co-processed excipient, the particles are designed in such a way to exhibit superior application properties and unmatched flowability, making it particularly suitable for continuous manufacturing processes.

Q: Virtual Pharma Assistants are another new offering from BASF. What are they, and how can they help customers?

Felicitas: Virtual Pharma Assistants, or VPAs, from BASF include ZoomLab, RegXcellence, and MyProductWorld. They provide important product and formulation information and science 24/7, even in areas and regions where it's difficult to have regular technical service representative visits.

ZoomLab, a virtual service platform for drug product development, is particularly special. It uses advanced algorithms to reduce time- and cost-consuming trial and error work by predicting optimal formulations. It's also a database where you can retrieve information on excipients and active ingredients.

This is a complimentary service that breaks down our new products to our customers and helps them develop their formulations better and faster, addressing the general need of the pharmaceutical industry for speed and efficiency.

Q: What is the Verbund concept, and how does BASF pass down the benefits to its customers?

Felicitas: The Verbund concept is one of our unique and greatest strengths. The concept means that our production plants, chemistry, energy and material flows, logistics, and site infrastructure are all integrated along the value chain.

For example, the products from one factory may be used as a starting material for another product. We have access to state-of-the-art technologies, innovative chemistry, biology, toxicology, and process innovation across a wide variety of industries. It's all connected. There is a lot of knowledge we can build on from other industries and combine it with our expert knowledge in the pharma field to develop the best products for our customers and users in the pharmaceutical industry.

Q: How can companies partner with BASF to innovate and develop new solutions for their customers?

Felicitas: We have a deep knowledge of chemistry at BASF, which I think is very special. We offer innovative functional excipients and active ingredients with outstanding quality and performance, along with strong support for customers through our global team of industry experts, technical service technicians, and regulatory affairs experts.

We also have a long history in the chemistry industry and a strong knowledge of how these compounds are manufactured. We are committed to the highest standards in quality, safety, regulatory compliance, and sustainability standards, and we can really add value in those regards to our customers as a reliable supplier of these ingredients.

Should any pharma manufacturers want to challenge BASF with their ingredient or material issues, we are looking forward to receiving their inquiry and we'd be happy to work with them.

Learn more about innovation at BASF Pharma.

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Innovating for the future of pharmaceuticals

Innovating for the future of pharmaceuticals

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