Janssen Expands Collaboration with Rutgers School of Engineering to Implement Continuous Manufacturing Initiative

Janssen Supply Chain has furthered its strategic partnership with the Rutgers University School of Engineering by providing over $6 million to expand ongoing research efforts supporting the company’s introduction of continuous manufacturing techniques for pharmaceuticals.

The funds from Janssen, part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, will increase research and development efforts at the Rutgers Engineering Research Center for Structured Organic Particulate Systems (C-SOPS) over the next several years. The center is helping Janssen transition several products to continuous manufacturing, including developing a specially designed manufacturing line at a Janssen facility in Puerto Rico. 

“We are very pleased to broaden our collaboration with Janssen on this important project and look forward to expanding collaborations with other pharmaceutical companies globally,” said Fernando J. Muzzio, director, National Science Foundation/Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Particulate Systems and professor II, chemical and biochemical engineering. “Continuous manufacturing represents the future of advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing and will produce significant improvements in efficiency, safety, cost and speed to market. Our center is now better positioned than ever to serve the scientific community, the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory agencies.”

The Rutgers ERC, established 9 years ago with funding from the National Science Foundation and a consortium of more than 40 companies within the pharmaceutical sector, is the world’s largest academic-based research organization dedicated to modernizing pharmaceutical manufacturing of solid oral dose medications. The funding from Janssen represents a significant expansion of an arrangement that began 5 years ago and that focuses on technical development of continuous processing, an emerging advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing method.