Continuous Crystallization & Novartis-MIT Center

 

The Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing is a 10-year research collaboration aimed at transforming pharmaceutical production. Combining the industrial expertise of Novartis with MIT’s scientific and technological leadership, the Center develops new technologies to replace the pharmaceutical industry’s conventional batch-based system with a continuous manufacturing process. Continuous manufacturing will benefit patients, healthcare providers, and the pharmaceutical industry by:

  • Accelerating the introduction of new drugs through efficient production processes
  • Requiring the use of smaller production facilities with lower building and capital costs
  • Minimizing waste, energy consumption, and raw material use
  • Monitoring drug quality on a continuous basis rather than through post-production batch-based testing
  • Enhancing process reliability and flexibility to respond to market needs

Our group, in cooperation with the Novartis-MIT Center is exploring the use of various types of continuous crystallization for pharmaceutical intermediates and final crystallization of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Issues related to purity, polymorphism, crystal size distribution, crystal shape, and scale-up and recycle are being studied.

Areas of focus:

  • Process design of continuous crystallization to increase yield of active pharmaceutical ingredients
  • Process design of continuous crystallization to enhance product purity
  • Novel Crystallizer Designs