ABSTRACT
The Stability Community of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) held a virtual workshop on "Vaccine Stability Considerations to Enable Rapid Development and Deployment", on March 24-25, 2021. The workshop included distinguished speakers and panelists from across the industry, academia, regulatory agencies, as well as health care leaders. This paper presents a review of the topics covered. Specifically the challenges in accelerating vaccine development and analytical characterization techniques to establish shelf-life were covered. Additionally, vaccine stability modeling using prior knowledge stability models and advanced kinetic analysis played a key in the EUA approaches discussed during the workshop. Finally, the role of stability studies in addressing the challenges of vaccine distribution and deployment during the pandemic were a focus of presentations and panel discussions. Although the workshop did not have any presentation topics directly dedicated to the mRNA vaccines, the techniques discussed are generally applicable. The mRNA vaccine developers were represented in the panel discussions, where experts involved in the EUA approval/deployment stages for this vaccine type could discuss the challenges as applied to their vaccines.
ABSTRACT
A rapid robust reversed-phase UHPLC method has been developed for the analysis of total benzalkonium chloride in preserved drug formulation. A systematic Quality-by-Design (QbD) method development approach using commercial, off the shelf software (Fusion AE(®)) has been used to optimize the column, mobile phases, gradient time, and other HPLC conditions. Total benzalkonium chloride analysis involves simple sample preparation. The method uses gradient elution from an ACE Excel 2 C18-AR column (50mm×2.1mm, 2.0µm particle size), ammonium phosphate buffer (pH 3.3; 10mM) as aqueous mobile phase and methanol/acetonitrile (85/15, v/v) as the organic mobile phase with UV detection at 214nm. Using these conditions, major homologs of the benzalkonium chloride (C12 and C14) have been separated in less than 2.0min. The validation results confirmed that the method is precise, accurate and linear at concentrations ranging from 0.025mg/mL to 0.075mg/mL for total benzalkonium chloride. The recoveries ranged from 99% to 103% at concentrations from 0.025mg/mL to 0.075mg/mL for total benzalkonium chloride. The validation results also confirmed the robustness of the method as predicted by Fusion AE(®).
