How to Design and Implement Powder-to-Tablet Continuous Manufacturing Systems

Fernando Muzzio is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University. For the last 22 years, pharmaceutical product and process design has been Professor Muzzio's main research and educational focus. His research interests comprise continuous manufacturing, powder mixing, powder flow, segregation, compression, mixing and flow of liquids and suspensions, capsule filling, tablet dissolution, and tablet coating. Dr. Muzzio has published more than 260 research papers in this area and his h-index is currently 45. He is a frequent advisor and lecturer at FDA events, and in 2010 he was appointed a voting member of the FDA committee on Pharmaceutical Sciences and Clinical Pharmacology.

Professor Fernando Muzzio is also the director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Particulate Systems. The center, which has a total budget in excess of $8 million per year, focuses on pharmaceutical product and process design, with special emphasis on continuous manufacturing, particle engineering, and personalized medicine. The FDA and 45 companies, including Amgen, Vertex, Lilly, Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and more, are currently members of the center. Dr. Sarang Oka is a Senior Manager at Hovione where he heads the continuous drug product manufacturing area at Hovione's site in East Windsor, New Jersey, overseeing all technical functions including manufacturing, process development, and process analytical technology (PAT).

Dr. Oka received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Rutgers University. His thesis focused on continuous powder mixing and granulation, and examined the role of continuous manufacturing in enabling direct compression of otherwise directly incompressible formulations. He was also part of the team at Rutgers University and NSF ERC-SOPS that helped develop Prezista, the first FDA approval for a batch-to-continuous conversion of a drug product. Dr. Oka holds a BS in chemical engineering from Mumbai University.