Environmental Impact Identification And Improvement Of Drug Development Supply Chains

Development of pharmaceuticals is mostly done with a blind side to the environment as it moves through the supply chain.This thesis assessed the current state of pharmaceutical research and development supply chains(specifically,preclinical and clinical trials)to determine the aspect that drives the greatest impact and how to improve it.Critical literature review of clinical trials supply chains revealed that solvent wastage had the greatest environmental impact and is often overlooked due to the pressure of development timelines.We incorporated cost as an economic dimension to other sustainability dimensions of solvents(Waste,Environment,Health,and Safety)in a model,such that a process requiring two or more solvents is rated in terms of how weights are distributed to each dimension in the process.This dimension weight distribution is influenced by the solvent ratings,required solvent quantity and cost..Our model was applied to two case studies;Pfizer’s process greening project of Viagra and a recently approved rare disease medicine(Tafamidis).We gained valuable insights on how the dynamics changes when the processes were altered(reducing the need or quantity of solvent expended in the process,solvent substitution and solvent cost fluctuations).We used scenarios to understand the point a sustainable process changes and how much process improvement should cost to maintain same sustainability profile.We also determined how routine inventory overages in phase three clinical trial of Tafamidis affected its sustainability profile.Despite limitations,we showed we can deduce which process among alternatives is“greener” in terms of waste,environment,health and safety,how much to spend on process improvement such that commercial supply chain can be more sustainable depending on the company’s strategy.We also validated the 3R’s of sustainability-reduce,reuse,recycle.