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.

A recent open peer-review publication from Britest enabled by work done in the ETERNAL project details a new framework for early-stage sustainability assessment of innovation projects and an enabling multi-criteria decision analysis methodology handling uncertainty in the evaluation of the options considered.

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.

Separation and purification in organic solvents are indispensable procedures in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) offers a low energy, low waste generating, and easily scalable alternative to the conventional method sof distillation or chromatography. A newly open-access published review from ETERNAL partners AstraZeneca comprehensively summarizes the recent progress of organic solvent nanofiltration and its applications in the pharmaceutical industry.

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.