OCTOBER 25–26, 2022, SAN DIEGO, CA
MedisourceRx's own pharmacist Pallavi Badkar is a key note speaker on the first day of the
summit!
Aseptic Compounding in the 503B Industry: Challenges and Mitigations Pallavi Devurkar-Badkar,
Director of Operations-503b, MedisourceRx The NECC tragedy in the compounding industry prompted
Congress to sign the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA) with the goal of preventing future
tragedies.
The 503B Outsourcing Facility designation originated from the DQSA. This type of facility is a
primary and preferred manufacturing source of drugs on shortage. They also may manufacture
sterile injectables from non-sterile APIs from the FDA approved bulk list. The challenge for
this entity is that 503B’s must follow cGMP but payers request small batch sizes of several
types of drugs packaged in various containers. While it is most ideal to employ automatic
filling machines to ensure sterility assurance of aseptic processing of drugs, these
technologies are cost prohibitive, inefficient in changeover, and often not flexible in
container choice. Therefore, manual aseptic processing (MAP) is often employed in this industry
as well as in traditional compounding pharmacies. While MAP allows for an increased flexibility
of the containers used and drug formulations produced, there is a high risk of contamination
from human interventions.