Activities

Two new CEN Workshops are being planned which will complement the activities of the EU Research project ETERNAL. These activities will seek to establish standardized methods for 'determining the encapsulation efficiency of RNA and DNA in LNPs using fluorometry' and 'early-stage sustainability assessment for chemical and biochemical manufacturing processes' respectively.

Congratulations to researchers at ETERNAL industrial partner AstraZeneca whose recent publication on recovery and reuse of homogeneous palladium catalysts via organic solvent nanofiltration has just been named as a 2025 HOT article by the editorial and review team at RSC Green Chemistry.

ETERNAL is proud to be a contributing organisation at the 2025 edition of the UK and Ireland’s premier event covering all aspects of the pharmaceutical supply chain, Making Pharmaceuticals, taking place at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry, UK on 29th and 30th April 2025.

The first annual meeting of the group of EU funded projects on Green Pharmaceuticals was held on 10th December 2024 in Brussels. Hosted by the European Commission, representatives of the ETERNAL project and our four sister projects currently within the cluster provided updates on the projects' objectives and progress, and had productive discussions with a range of stakeholders from across the Community.

The ETERNAL project consortium's 5th General Assembly meeting in Barcelona on 24th and 25th October 2024 heard reports of continuing strong progress as the project's six industrial case study teams start to transition the focus of their work towards scale up for impact.

The ETERNAL project made a significant impact at the recent EuroMembrane 2024 conference held in Prague, Czechia. Our talented team members from AstraZeneca, Dr. Yanyue Feng and Dr. Hui Xiao, proudly represented the project at Europe's largest membranes conference which attracts nearly 1000 attendees, sharing key research results emerging from ETERNAL's case study in the use of membranes for valuable materials recovery and solvent purification in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The ETERNAL project recently contributed to the success of a well-received Speciality Chemicals Symposium run by the Royal Society of Chemistry in conjunction with the Chemspec Europe 2024 exhibition in Düsseldorf, Germany.

ETERNAL and four other Horizon Europe research projects. have joined forces to form a Green Pharma Horizon Projects Cluster and capitalize on synergistic development. The aim of this cluster of R&D projects is to increase the sustainability of pharmaceutical products and exploit research synergies to boost the impact of innovations. Three working groups have been created: active pharmaceutical ingredient synthesis, pharmaceutical life cycle assessment and communication of key messages.

We look forward into the year ahead with a sense of growing excitement as the ETERNAL project’s collaborative research and case study strands gather pace. With several parts of the project’s work programme starting to deliver early results and work progressing strongly across the board, we are looking forward to sharing some of the early highlights and our latest thinking at two notable gatherings of industrialists and researchers from the pharmaceutical and specialty chemicals sectors respectively in the first half of 2024.

The ETERNAL project just celebrated its first birthday. During that time the project partners have established strong and effective reporting structures and working relationships to deliver on an ambitious programme bringing together extensive industrial case studies scaling up sustainable, green pharmaceutical manufacturing processes with new insight into the environmental and ecotoxicological impacts of drug manufacture and consumption, to better understand how the one can maximally improve the other. Project coordinator Pablo Ferrer Pérez reflects on some of the significant first steps taken during this time and the foundations that have been laid for future success.

ETERNAL is actively seeking to reach out to people working right across the pharmaceutical value chain from drug development and design, through manufacture, distribution, healthcare, disposal and public utilities to understand where we can prioritise action promoting change for sustainable healthcare. You can help by sharing your views in our short stakeholder survey.

As part of the comprehensive industrial cocreation process through which ETERNAL’s case studies are being steered, Britest is developing a methodology which variously helps innovators to find the most sustainable process route when faced with multiple possibilities, to identify and challenge environmental impacts, and to develop cost effective carbon footprint reduction plans across their products’ value chain.

Representatives of the ETERNAL project team are already mobilizing to reach out to the world beyond our consortium, getting out and about to introduce the project and to learn more from others. Find out more about some productive early cross-project discussions and plans to engage with our target stakeholders later in the year at the CPHI Europe show in Barcelona. We hope to see you there!

The ETERNAL consortium members enjoyed an energizing two days at the University of Aveiro when they gathered to mark the project’s six-month stage General Assembly meeting.

We are pleased to share this online version of a new brochure providing an overview of the essential features and key themes of the ETERNAL project.

A number of the ETERNAL project partners have been anticipating and outlining how they will be contributing to the project’s overall aim to establish safe and sustainable pharmaceutical lifecycles by design.

The recent launch of the ETERNAL project has generated some early press interest in our new four-year contribution to the sustainable development of pharmaceutical manufacture, use and disposal, by using and promoting full life cycle approaches covering design, manufacture, use, and disposal.

The ETERNAL project held a successful kick-off meeting in Valencia, Spain on 27th and 28th September. This new four-year EC Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action will contribute to sustainable development of pharmaceutical manufacture, use and disposal, by using and promoting full life cycle approaches covering design, manufacture, usage, and disposal, assessing the environmental risks of not only active pharmaceutical ingredients and residues or metabolites, but other chemicals and by-products of the production process. In other words, safe and sustainable pharmaceutical lifecycles by design.