Closing the life cycle of the pharmaceutical ingredients from biological origin a green interface to waste management

Abstract

One of the greatest advantages of pharmaceutical biotechnology is the versatility. And although its approach to the production of drugs opens a plethora of green and sustainable possibilities, the generation of waste continues to represent a problem on a smaller scale, but it can be brought to near zero. This work proposes an alternative for recovery, treatment and reintroduction of waste in the production lines. Through the recovery of bacterial biomass residues, generated during the production of Active Pharmaceuticals Ingredients and excipients, we were able to extract concentrates of protein useful for the design of new culture media. We present 12 media designed with the processed waste, which have the same or better production yield than the commercial reference medium. In all cases, biomass production exceeds that obtained when growing under the same conditions in commercial media. This approach allowed us to solve a waste management problem, to reduce costs and to generate high added value products from waste. Its degree of innovation allowed us to protect the methods and prototypes in a patent application.