Phlow Corp, a Virginia-based startup aimed at producing American-made essential medicines, is taking the next step in validating its approach to continuous manufacturing.
This week, the company announced that it’s joining forces with the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), a non-profit that sets quality standards for drug manufacturing, to develop a lab to certify its manufacturing processes.
Under the alliance, USP scientists will work at a lab inside Virginia Biotechnology Research Park to provide analytical support for Phlow’s “flow chemistry” and other continuous processes that the company is leveraging to provide end-to-end manufacturing for generic drug ingredients.
Last year, Phlow won a contract worth up to $812 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority (BARDA) to produce essential generic medicines for the strategic national stockpile.
Now, one of the aims through the new collaboration is to encourage industry adoption of the continuous manufacturing methods developed in the lab to boost domestic production of generic drugs.
“We hope that USP’s work with Phlow will help pave the way for the pharmaceutical industry to apply continuous manufacturing more broadly for the generic medicines so many patients rely upon,” Ronald Piervincenzi, CEO of USP, said in a statement.
