Nutramedic &Cosmetics
Technology Transfer at Fine Foods
A Balance Between Hard and Soft Skills One of Fine Foods' key success factors is the correct mix of technical expertise, experience and innovative capacity, customer care and team passion.
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ine Foods & Pharmaceuticals N.T.M. S.p.A. is an Italian independent Contract Development & Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO). It deve lops and manufactures contract products for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmetics indus tries. The Group, and particularly the pharmaceutical di vision, considers it essential to introduce new pro ducts through technology transfer development. The pharmaceutical sector is proceeding along two parallel lines - the search for innovative therapeutic strategies, which is the prerogative of multinationals able to invest significant resources in the long term, and maintaining a therapeutic level with primary ca re drugs that guarantee suitable solutions and drug quality. Transferring a drug normally used in established therapeutic practice, entails a careful assessment of partners. Moving from an original production site to a CMO requires evaluating financial and the receiv
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ing organisation’s quality and reliability parameters. When a technology transfer process is applied to drugs that have been on the market for decades, a se ries of aspects must be considered. This includes equipment that has changed and improved (even if the basic technologies remain unchanged) and the availability of excipients that can improve the drug’s features, without changing its formula. While following the specifications and the scope of sustainable regulatory changes, it is possible to improve product quality and add value to a drug that will continue to play its therapeutic role over the years. The correct mix of experience, process knowledge and involvement of organisation components deci des the success of the technology transfer process. It is a complex activity involving a series of codified steps that must not be taken for granted. A technology transfer project consists of four criti cal steps, and each is crucial for the project continu ation.
