A Quality by Design Approach to Developing and Manufacturing Polymeric Nanoparticle Drug Products

The translation of nanomedicines from concepts to commercial products has not reached its full potential, in part because of the technical and regulatory challenges associated with chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) development of such complex products. It is critical to take a quality by design (QbD) approach to developing nanomedicines—using a risk-based approach to identifying and classifying product attributes and process parameters and ultimately developing a deep understanding of the products, processes, and platform. This article exemplifies a QbD approach used by BIND Therapeutics, Inc., to industrialize a polymeric targeted nanoparticle drug delivery platform. The focus of the approach is on CMC affairs but consideration is also given to preclinical, clinical, and regulatory aspects of pharmaceutical development. Processes are described for developing a quality target product profile and designing supporting preclinical studies, defining critical quality attributes and process parameters, building a process knowledge map, and employing QbD to support outsourced manufacturing.