Risk of Contamination
Mitigating risk of contamination is the top priority for manufacturers of biopharmaceuticals. Single-use technology helps biopharmaceutical manufacturers control their risk by reducing or eliminating the need take down equipment for frequent sterilization. Bioproduction processes such as cell culture manufacturing require specialized approaches to address the specific process needs. Single-use technology addresses these demands and allows for greater process uptime. A ‘single-use’ product is intended for one-time use, are typically made from plastics, and are disposed of after use.
Technology for manufacturing single-use components has improved dramatically in recent years. This has both expanded the range of single-use components and lowered the price. Increased availability and decreased cost has predictably caused rapid adoption of single-use technology across the biopharma sectors. Not all single-use parts are new tech. Tubing for example has been a fundamental part of bioprocessing for many decades. Tubing technology has improved over those decades to best suit individual applications, for example peristaltic pump tubing should be very resilient and have low spallation.
The Verderflex Vantage 5000 bioprocessing pump incorporates single-use tubing elements and also accepts continuous tubing. The pump is compatible with many sizes and materials of tubing to greatly increase flexibility among a range of single-use tube availability.
Even contract manufacturing organizations have accepted and adopted single-use technology to increase manufacturing efficiencies. Small-scale production componentry can often be applied for some large-scale manufacturing. Single-use technology offers many advantages to the industry not limited to risk management, better uptime and yield, and cost-effectiveness. There is no end in sight for the disposable product market.