WellSpring Pharma Services Blog Practical Considerations in Pharmaceutical Production Scale-Up

Scale-Up Blog Series, Part 1 From first-in-human and through each of the clinical trial stages and into commercialization, scale-up of formulation design is a natural part of pharmaceutical development. At each stage of process development, the batch size increases, from laboratory-scale batches that may be quite small to support preclinical and early clinical stages, to pilot batches that are used in process development, and finally to the production-scale batches needed to support commercialization.Not surprisingly, the size, speed and power of the equipment involved in production has a significant impact on the entire process and must be matched to the batch-size requirements for production efficiency. Regardless of the size of the batch and its application - for use in clinical trials and stability testing, to service a smaller patient population with an orphan drug, or to provide for a larger population with a commercial product - the object is always the same: the finished product must be identical to the original formulation design regardless of the volume under which it is was produced.