A newly released public deliverable of the ETERNAL project lays out the key-drivers and a possible regulatory roadmap for “compliant-by-design” strategies applying the concepts of “greener design” to be delivered in Europe.

A key aspect of evaluating the environmental impact and sustainability of pharmaceuticals is assessing the risk that they may pose to ecosystems. A new public report from the ETERNAL project provides an overview of the current EMA regulation covering the environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals, followed by a comparison against the new proposed Regulation and Directive published earlier in 2023. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for integrating the latest scientific knowledge into pharmaceutical risk assessment to help fill gaps in the current and proposed legislation.

ETERNAL's second newsletter reflects upon a strong first year of progress as we’ve got the ball moving across the project’s activities. You can read about how advances in membrane technology are helping one of the project’s major industrial partners put sustainability at the heart of their business, hear about how a new process understanding methodology for sustainability is helping ETERNAL’s innovators set objective goals for success, and find out about how prospective changes in the European regulatory landscape might change the expectations laid upon producers in a bid to enhance environmental protections. Plus much more!

The prospect of new and transformed regulation for pharmaceuticals in the EU has got the ETERNAL team talking. This article explores the potential additional protection offered to the environment by the new proposals beyond what is currently in force.

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.

Meet the people working in ETERNAL to translate the alignment of ETERNAL’s goals and AstraZeneca’s sustainability strategy into demonstrable developments in the use of membranes in pharmaceutical processing to recover and purify solvents with energy efficiency, remove impurities, and reduce ecotoxicity of waste streams.

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.

The application of digital technologies to the pharmaceutical industries has the potential to significantly increase the agility, efficiency and flexibility, the sustainability of the drug manufacturing processes, and the quality of the medicines produced. Despite all this, the pharmaceutical industry has been more hesitant to adopt digital technologies than other industries due to the complexities and expertise required in its development and manufacturing processes. However, with the growing demand for traditional and new drugs, there is a clear need for digitalization in the sector.

Welcome to ETERNAL's first newsletter. Amongst other things this edition features news on early progress made, perspectives on ETERNAL's theme's and ambitions, research into how biopharmaceutical processes can be made “greener by design” using genome engineering, and the opportunities presented by the new European Unitary Patent system.

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 European Unitary Patent (EUP) represents a new era for Intellectual Property (IP) protection for European small and medium enterprises (SMEs), industry and researchers, as well as a significant milestone in the evolution of IP protection across the EU member states. Find out more about the possibilities opened up by EUP and how they may affect how you protect your intellectual property in future.

Meet Prof. Andriy Luzhetskyy and Alina Zayachkivska from the the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) who are focused on metabolic engineering of actinobacteria

ETERNAL’s Technical Co-ordinator Raquel Llorens-Chiralt takes a few minutes to reflect upon the project’s overall themes and share her hopes and ambitions for how ETERNAL’s combination of collaborative research and co-created change activities can contribute to making pharmaceutical manufacture greener by design.

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.

Using standards as a knowledge source in the earliest possible stages of research and innovation avoids duplication of work and provides the basis for future marketable products. This deliverable identifies and describes the standardisation technical committees (TCs) at European and International level related to the ETERNAL project as well as the published standards (existing and under development) that could be relevant and useful for all the project activities.

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.