PDA Opens 2018 with Pharma Glass/Packaging Quality Events with Regulator Participation 12 January, 2018

Bethesda, Md., January 12, 2018 – The Parenteral Drug Association, Inc. (PDA) announced today the speaker line-ups for its parenteral glass/packaging conferences taking place Jan. 23-24 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC and Feb. 27-28 at the Marriott Rome Park Hotel in Rome.

2018 PDA Glass Quality Conference in Washington features the participation of experts from pharma companies like Merck & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S, glass experts from several vial vendors, including Corning Pharmaceutical Technologies, Nipro PharmaPackaging, and Nuova Ompi, who will discuss the latest advances to provide higher quality containers for injectable products. The U.S. FDA will be represented by David Jaworski, Senior Policy Advisor, CDER, and Sau “Larry” Lee, PhD, Deputy Director of the Office of Testing and Research, CDER.

Parenteral Packaging in Rome features an entire track on parenteral glass that will include talks from Corning, OMPI, Schott and other glass manufacturing vendors. Other tracks will explore challenges of parenteral manufacturing that can result in other glass-related quality issues, such as breakage, and container closure integrity. Representatives from the U.S. FDA, WHO and MHRA are expected.
Glass packaging continues to present challenges to manufacturers of parenteral products, yet it remains an important packaging component for the industry. Ongoing problems are highlighted by a Jan. 4 U.S. FDA announcement of an injectable product recall because of glass particles in the product vial.

In 2017, PDA launched an initiative to bring together executives from biologic/pharmaceutical manufacturers and glass container and elastomeric closure suppliers.

“The first goal of this initiative is to eliminate visible particles from parenteral products,” said PDA President Richard Johnson, who will present the results of a PDA survey on glass quality at the Washington conference on Jan. 24.

More information on the Washington Conference can be found here; and the Rome Conference here.

Press are encouraged to register for a free press pass here.