Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) & Drug Product Specifications – From Clinical Development to Market Approval

Specifications for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and pharmaceutical drug products, both chemical drugs and biologics, are essential for product quality and patient protection. The goals of specification setting are (1) to determine appropriate and safe limits or quantitative ranges during clinical development and (2) to justify specifications for the product to enter the market. One of the most difficult challenges in establishing and subsequently justifying specifications is achieving the appropriate balance among all factors – patient safety and efficacy, scientific data, analytical variability, process knowledge and capability, regulatory requirements, and business issues.

The approach to specification setting and their justification has undergone significant change. Strategic international ICH regulatory guidances have been adopted that are driving the entire pharmaceutical industry, including both chemical drugs and biologics, to a higher standard of performance, including Quality by Design (QbD), Quality Risk Management (QRM) and Pharmaceutical Quality System (PQS).

Therefore, it is most important for a pharmaceutical company to have an effective and regulatory compliant approach to setting specifications that can meet both FDA and EMA requirements and expectations. At each stage of drug development, from Phase 1 through commercialization, the basic question needs to be addressed: ‘What is absolutely necessary for the assigned specification to be successful in getting the chemical drug/biologic through clinical trials and into the market, but without impacting patient safety or creating delays in the program?’ Of equal importance is the need to justify which quality attributes do not need an assigned specification. Regulatory compliant deficiencies in assigned specifications have resulted in clinical holds and market approval delays.

This course will help the attendee to establish specifications meeting global regulatory requirements and expectations. Participants will also become effective in justification of specifications.

John Geigert, Ph.D., RAC, is President of BioPharmaceutical Quality Solutions, which for the last 12 years has specialized in providing CMC regulatory strategy consulting for the biopharmaceutical and biologic industry.

Dr. Geigert has over 35 years of CMC industrial experience and leadership in the biopharmaceutical industry. He has held senior management positions as Vice President of Quality at both IDEC Pharmaceuticals Corporation in San Diego and Immunex Corporation in Seattle, and he was Director of Product Development for Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, CA. At these companies, he led the CMC efforts to obtain regulatory approvals for 6 biopharmaceutical products (4 recombinant proteins and 2 monoclonal antibodies) now commercially available in the U.S. and Europe.

He has served on the PDA Board of Directors, co-chaired the PDA Biotech Advisory Board, and served as an expert member of the USP Biotechnology Committee.

He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Washington State University, and his Ph.D. degree in Organic/Analytical Chemistry from Colorado State University.