(107d) Lessons Learned through Measuring Green Chemistry Performance: The Pharmaceutical Experience

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute® Pharmaceutical Roundtable is a global, collaborative organization currently comprised of nine international pharmaceutical companies whose mission is to catalyze the implementation of green chemistry and engineering in the pharmaceutical industry. Membership is open to all pharmaceutical research, development, and manufacturing companies and the roundtable will be strongest when all global pharmaceutical corporations are members. The strategic aims of the roundtable are to inform and influence the green chemistry research agenda to help meet the challenges of the pharmaceutical industry; to develop common tools for use across the pharmaceutical industry; to provide resources for education about green chemistry focused on the pharmaceutical industry; and to be a forum for cooperation and collaboration between the member companies to embed green chemistry and science into everyday operations and processes.

One of the major green chemistry challenges for the pharmaceutical industry is to decrease the process mass intensity (the amount of material used to make a drug per kg of drug) of the manufacturing processes used to produce Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API). To begin addressing this challenge, ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable members have developed a common process mass intensity metric that allows data from each company to be compared on a transparent and equitable basis. Data from member companies has been collected as part of a benchmarking exercise and has yielded a representative snapshot of the process mass intensities observed for those compounds under development at each company.

This talk will focus on an explanation of process mass intensity and will provide results of the benchmarking exercise between member companies.