Niklaus Künzle, Senior Director, Process Technologies & Innovation, Lonza
As a chemical engineer, it’s perhaps unsurprising that I find it immensely satisfying to use technology to solve problems. Over the past 20 years, I have built my career around finding better processes and techniques for pharmaceutical manufacturing by iteratively evaluating and improving the way we do chemistry here at Lonza. Often, this is through a combination of fundamental technological innovations and subtle tweaks to the way individual processes are carried out. In both cases, advanced process technologies are at the forefront. The way we run our operations impacts every product metric – quality, cost, reliability, safety, and even sustainability – and advanced process technologies provide tools to optimize them all.
That’s not to say one size fits all. There’s no single perfect combination of process technologies that will meet the needs of every project. At Lonza Small Molecules, we recognize that the key to rapid, robust, and reliable service is taking an individual approach: whether a reaction is better performed in batch or in flow will depend on the specifics of the chemistry. Likewise, purification strategies must consider the product's nature and any impurities formed to maximize the reaction yield. Understanding the process at scale and the chemistry underpinning it is central to the success of these projects, and expertise across a spectrum of technologies is therefore vital if we are to develop the optimal strategy.
The sheer depth of knowledge and experience we have here at Lonza is particularly valuable in this regard. Our teams are drawn from a vast range of specialisms, meaning every project benefits from multiple expert perspectives, from particle engineering to thermal separation technology to digitization. The history and breadth of the wider company are other assets here. The experts on our teams have worked on a huge range of projects, not just in Small Molecules but across Lonza’s other divisions such as Capsules & Health Ingredients and Biologics, exposing them to the full diversity of manufacturing challenges and the innovative way these can be solved. This bedrock of varied experience gives our teams a collective intuition for how to solve problems, and which technologies will make the most significant impact in a particular context.
Every client project reaps the benefit of this vast knowledge resource. At Lonza, we firmly believe collaboration is the best problem solver: our process technology and innovation department works closely with the production teams to understand any existing limitations in the manufacturing pipeline, and how additional tech interventions could improve the process. These insights are then brought to an interdisciplinary brainstorming session, where representatives with different technology backgrounds share ideas and exchange perspectives. Such a broad skill set addressing the challenges in each process is key to finding and implementing successful syntheses, and is one of the many advantages that makes Lonza the first choice for customers.
Of course, some innovations will benefit every project. Reliability – producing a consistent quality and quantity of the compound every time – is the biggest challenge for process chemistry, and the hallmark of a truly excellent manufacturing operation. Analytics are crucial for a reliable process, and at Lonza, we believe the more information we can gather about the chemistry, the better.
Traditionally, reaction monitoring involves taking a sample and submitting it to a QC lab for analysis. While this is useful, it merely provides a single snapshot of the reaction at the moment the sample was taken. By the time the results come back, the actual state of the reaction – the amount of products, side-products, and starting materials – is likely to be completely different.
Continuous monitoring, therefore, represents a significant advancement in analytics, and Lonza is heavily investing in online analytics systems to ensure we always have to-the-moment data for every reaction. Probes collect spectroscopic data, and these are translated into yields and other relevant reaction parameters using a tailored algorithm. This constant analysis ensures the quality of our products never varies – any deviation from the expected readout is picked up immediately, meaning potential problems are identified and solved before they even arise.
These kinds of advanced process technologies allow us to constantly improve our offering, and I personally find that infinite possibility immensely exciting. We’re always on the lookout for new technologies and innovations that we could incorporate into our processes, recognizing the potential of emerging techniques while remaining sharply focused on the specific needs of the project at hand. Our customers choose us because we can deliver tailored solutions quickly and consistently, and, as head of process technology and innovation, I can say it’s a genuine pleasure to do so.