Month: June 2021

Harry Lightsey, Gov. Henry McMaster’s nominee as the next secretary of the S.C. Department of Commerce, brings a background in two industries — telecommunications and automotive — that both men believe will be key to continuing the state’s business recruitment and manufacturing momentum.

 “I’ve spent my entire career being part of businesses that have shaped our modern lifestyle,” said Lightsey, introduced today as McMaster’s nominee to succeed Bobby Hitt, retiring this fall. “My career in telecommunications spanned the dawn of wireless communications and the internet. My time in automobile manufacturing has seen the beginning of a technological shift that leaders like Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, have described as unparalleled since the days of Henry Ford.” …

“The guy’s got the resume. He said the right things,” Kennedy, whose company’s $215.8 million expansion was part of the $4 billion in capital investment South Carolina attracted in 2020, told the Columbia Regional Business Report. “I see nothing but upwardly mobile trajectory. … The whole thing was music to my ears, especially talking about innovation. We’ve been smack in the middle of Bobby’s 10 years, and I feel like, let’s help bring the next 10 along. With any luck, we’ll have another big announcement that we can deliver for the new guy.”

To read the entire story, visit the Columbia Regional Business Report.

Red Cross officials say the vehicles are critical to our ability to collect, test and deliver blood to patients in need. The vehicle can also deliver supplies to those recovering from emergency disasters.

“This has been a very difficult time for everyone in South Carolina and we are encouraged to see a new phase in the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Rod Tolbert, the Regional CEO of the Red Cross of South Carolina. “We are so appreciative of Nephron Pharmaceuticals and their generous donation and commitment to partner with us to better our communities and make them more resilient. Partners, like Nephron Pharmaceuticals, are vital to providing our state with the services they need.”

Officials with Nephron are happy to be part of the effort to save lives in South Carolina during times of crisis.

“Nephron is proud of the role our team has been able to play on the front lines of the nationwide response to COVID-19,” said Nephron CEO Lou Kennedy. “In fact, we believe it is our obligation to step up and serve during times of crises, and we are grateful for another opportunity to serve through this partnership with the Red Cross.”

For more information about how you can donate to the Red Cross, visit www.redcrossblood.org.

WATCH ABC COLUMBIA’s REPORT HERE.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Leaders from across South Carolina will come together Tuesday to discuss funds coming to the state from the American Rescue Plan Act.

Gov. Henry McMaster will hold the 2 p.m. meeting with members of accelerateSC. You can watch the meeting in the video box above.

The group will receive an overview from South Carolina Department of Administration staff on the many funding streams coming to the state.

McMaster originally established accelerateSC in 2020 as a coordinated economic revitalization plan that included representatives from the business community, health care professionals, local government officials, and education professionals. AccelerateSC consisted of five components, which helped guide the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Response, Protection, Governance, Resources, and Information.

The latest team of accelerateSC will be comprised 12 original members, two from Greenville, including Mayor Knox White. James Burns, who is a partner at the law firm of Nelson, Mullins, Riley and Scarborough and previously served as executive director of accelerateSC, will chair the group.

McMaster will develop and distribute his recommendations for how the General Assembly should invest ARPA funds following a series of accelerateSC meetings.

Members of accelerateSC include:

Lou Kennedy –Kennedy is CEO and owner of Nephron Pharmaceuticals in West Columbia. Nephron is on the frontlines of the nationwide response to COVID-19, manufacturing more than half of the respiratory solutions used to treat symptoms associated with the virus. Kennedy is chairman of S.C. BIO, the largest advocacy group for the life sciences industry in the state, and the immediate past chairman of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

To read the entire story, visit WYFF Channel 4.

Robotics in compounding facilities

A pharmaceutical manufacturing company adopting cutting-edge robotic technology for its CGMP 503B operations is Nephron Pharmaceuticals in South Carolina. The company, which specializes in producing generic respiratory medications using a fully automated process with blow-fill-seal (BFS) technology, launched its division for sterile compounded drugs in 2017 and began with manual operations, in which pharmacy technicians worked inside laminar-flow hoods to fill parenteral solutions coming from sterile filtration into intravenous (IV) bags or syringes. Now, Nephron is moving to robotic systems inside of the laminar-flow hood to perform these fill/finish operations. The company worked with the University of South Carolina (UofSC) and Clemson University in two separate projects to custom design robots for this application. In April 2021, Nephron validated the UofSC system and began commercial production, says Lou Kennedy, CEO of Nephron. A second robot is already being built, and more are planned. “We’re producing drugs on FDA’s drug shortages list, and this 503B space is growing,” she says. Robotic systems will improve productivity, reduce the burden of repetitive physical work for operators, and provide better accuracy and precision. Future projects will seek to increase speed of the robots to obtain higher throughput.

In addition to being used in commercial production at Nephron, Kennedy would like to see the robotic systems licensed to hospital compounding facilities. “What I love about both the Clemson and UofSC projects is that as we collaborate with both undergraduate and graduate students, we’re helping develop future industry employees,” says Kennedy.

Preparing the workforce

Although a common fear is that robots will eliminate people’s jobs, Kennedy says this concern is unfounded. “Robotics is not eliminating people; it’s teaching people to have new skills to operate automation,” she notes. “Operators need to learn how to service the robot and work with it, to solve a jam or replenish components, for example. Operators are also needed for quality functions.”

Kennedy notes that Nephron sees a need for more pharmacy technicians, and the company works closely with local schools to help develop the future workforce. For example, Nephron built a sterile compounding lab on the nearby UofSC campus that is used to train pharmacy students at the university as well as two-year students from the local technical college in using robotics in sterile compounding.

Both developing an understanding of how robotics works and specific training with the equipment and its functions are key, adds Fraatz. “It is a new approach, which means trust needs to be gained, starting from education and understanding, so people can appreciate the purpose of robotic automation. Once they believe in the purpose, they can grow their familiarity and comfort with it.”

Read the entire story at PHARM TECH.

Drug shortages have plagued health care for decades. Even prior to COVID-19, hospitals incurred more than $400 million in labor costs and alternative treatment options due to national generic drug shortages, especially for those administered via injection.

And research shows shortages lead to things like delaying critical procedures, rationing doses based on supply levels and prescribing suboptimal treatment plans with substitute drugs — resulting in adverse patient outcomes.

Manufacturing tops the list as the most common cause of shortages, pushing those in the pharmaceutical supply chain to look for new ways to increase productivity — and thanks to a partnership between Clemson and Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation, a solution may be on the horizon.

Led by Associate Professor Yue “Sophie” Wang, the project combines robotics and medicine to ensure sterility, quality, safety and efficiency in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Her team worked in partnership with South Carolina-based Nephron to develop a flexible, easy to use, open-source benchtop robot that can fill, cap and seal sterile syringes.

“Pharmaceutical collaborative robots is a new and quickly growing research area,” said Wang, who serves as the Warren H. Owen Duke Energy Associate Professor of Engineering. “By combining our expertise with unique applications in pharmaceutical manufacturing, we hope to benefit both patients and the industry through increased efficiency in syringe manufacturing.”

The project supports the Nephron 503B Outsourcing Facility, which provides sterile, pre-filled medications to hospitals and medical facilities across America. Pre-filled syringes help control costs by minimizing drug overfill and minimizing microbial contamination.

“Anything we can do to improve drug shortages, that’s just good for patients,” said Nephron CEO Lou Kennedy. “It’s a very big crisis, not just in the U.S. but globally as well.”

The partnership was developed through Clemson’s Office of Corporate Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives. The next phase of the project is further development, starting with the completion of a purpose-built clean room on Clemson’s campus. Kennedy hopes to commercialize the benchtop system for use inside health care facilities across the country.

Clemson and Nephron are at the forefront of a larger trend shaping pharmaceutical manufacturing today. The integration of automation, AI and robotics is catalyzing the industry, and rising demand paired with major market disruptions, such as COVID-19, are only accelerating change. The pharmaceutical robotic systems market is expected to nearly double to $119.46 million from just five years ago, driven by innovations in packaging, inspection and lab work, according to one report.

Part of what has made the project successful is the complementary strengths Nephron and Clemson have brought to the table. Wang needed an insider’s perspective on pharmaceutical manufacturing to understand the exact requirements and processes involved in sterile syringe production. In addition to Clemson’s research talent, Nephron was also drawn to the steady stream of talented graduates who could hit the ground running at their facilities. 

The entire story is available online at Clemson World.