(478f) Development of New Curriculum in Pharmaceutical Bioprocessing: a Novel Educational Area in Pharmaceutical Engineering

The Otto H. York Department of Chemical Engineering at NJIT, recently renamed the Otto H. York Department of Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering to clearly signal that it is expanding in areas that it considers strategic, has been a pioneer in the development of educational programs for students and professionals who plan or are already working in the pharmaceutical industry. While significant activities both on the educational and the research fronts have taken place in the department in the now ?traditional? pharmaceutical engineering area, much less emphasis has been placed so far on the biological engineering component, although significant biological expertise already exist in the department and this is clearly an area of development for the entire pharmaceutical industry.

With this contribution, we would like to present a case study on the development of a novel MS program in Pharmaceutical Bioprocessing, which can be conceived as a new area of growth for the pharmaceutical industry and an area in need of new educational programs. The driving force for this development is in the pharmaceutical industry itself, which is rapidly and massively moving into the biotech area, since it sees this as the new growth area for the industry and the only major alternative to the declining prospects for the development of future block-busters using small-molecule pharmaceuticals. There is the potential for a strong student demand in this area, also fueled by the need of the industry to re-tool some of its workforce.

In this presentation, we show how existing pharmaceutical and chemical engineering programs can be partially modified and readapted to address the new needs of the pharmaceutical industry, as far as the area of processing engineering applied to bioprocesses is concerned.