Issue: September / October 2022

Ever tried to bake a cake without key ingredients? The outcomes are sure to be negative. In this piece, Pfizer CentreOne’s Tom Wilson builds on that analogy as it relates to pharma’s manufacturing and business models and the effects of disruptions in the supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The industry’s goal is straightforward: get medicine to patients. If the supply chain is broken, critical medicine’s API supply is disrupted, and that essential promise can be broken.

Physical properties of chemicals are their unique hallmark. They are used in various unit operations to create simple and excellent chemical processes. They have been used for the last 100+ years to produce different fine/specialty chemicals that have improved our health and life style. Large amount of solvents have allowed use of available equipment to produce different fine/specialty chemicals. Even though most of the solvents are recovered and recycled, they still leave a large environmental footprint. For pharmaceutical active ingredients the foot print is the highest. Creative and thoughtful use of physical properties and unit operations can lead to significant lowering of emissions i.e. towards “Net Zero”. Out the box effort is needed and is reviewed in the book (2).