Quality by Design in Action 2: Controlling Critical Material Attributes during the Synthesis of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient

Quality by Design (QbD) is of paramount importance not only for patient safety but also for the timely and uninterrupted supply of products at affordable prices into the market. Both of these objectives can be achieved only through a robust process, and one of the major obstacles for developing a robust process is the quality of input materials and reagents used for the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). This article demonstrates the use of QbD methodology to optimize the quality of input materials and make the process more consistent, thereby reducing the variation in the quality of API produced. This article highlights the use of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) for the unbiased identification of critical process parameters and critical material attributes associated with the manufacturing of key starting materials, which are later used as input for the design of experiments (DoE) study that is used for the optimization.