Workshop report: Sustainable practices in personalised medicine manufacture

This workshop report explores current and future environmental sustainability challenges in personalised biological medicine and how the Hub should prioritise these challenges.

On 01 July 2022, the Future Targeted Healthcare Manufacturing Hub (the ‘Hub’) held an online sandpit workshop to outline the current and future priorities in sustainable practices for manufacturing personalised medicines, and how the Hub should integrate and advance these in the next phase of their research. The workshop brought together the Hub team with a range of national and international stakeholders involved in personalised medicine development, manufacturing, delivery, and policy.

Key points

Carbon emissions: addressing carbon emissions for PMs are likely to have the greatest impact on sustainability targets. Little is known about scope 3 (supply chain) emissions for a PM so mapping these would be valuable.
Circular economy: single use plastics have increased in prevalence and very little is reused or recycled, due to sterilisation needs. Working with other sectors to recycle these plastics would be very valuable.
Waste: reducing waste through process intensification will lead to more sustainable manufacturing. A mapping exercise of the different process steps and how these can be intensified would be of value.
Biodiversity: work is needed to understand the impacts of manufacturing personalised medicines on biodiversity as little is currently known about this.

Download the Sustainable practices in personalised medicine manufacture report [PDF]