AAPS National Biotechnology Conference 2025: Accelerating Formulation of High-Concentration Biologics

The use of automation in the protein industry is relatively new, according to Lun Xin, associate director at WuXi Biologics, with automated analysis, automated upstream, and automated downstream production becoming more common. “Where this industry is going is automation, particularly coming down to the drug product formulation [and] development,” says Xin. “This [is] because we need to understand the protein’s properties and then screen different types of buffer pH exceptions. [There] may be up to 300 or 400 different combinations of the permutation of that, [so,] it's a lot larger. And so, [with] information development, the biggest challenge is that you have to do stability studies in order to understand if the drug is stable over the long term. The goal is to deliver something that is stable over five years of time.”

Xin says the number of weeks needed to perform a development study for stability studies can be reduced by automation. “When you're making a large number of formulations, you may be looking at 20, 30, 40, different types of chemicals that need to be mixed at different ratios with each other to come up with a large panel of formulations,” says Xin. “So, in order to do that accurately, … [automation is a] very useful tool to be able to create those formulations.”

BioPharm International^® spoke with Xin about using automation to improve the formulation of high-concentration biologics ahead of his presentation at the AAPS National Biotechnology Conference, which is being held May 4–7, 2025 in Boston. Xin’s presentation, “Accelerating High Concentration Formulation Development with Big Data-Driven High-Throughput Technologies”, will be occurring on Tuesday, May 6 at 10:30AM.

Click the video above to watch part two of our interview with Lun Xin.

About the speaker

Lun Xin is associate director at Wuxi Biologics.