October 13, 2005

Purdue dedicates pharmaceutical center for drug manufacturing

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue Research Park's new pharmaceutical facility opened on Thursday (Oct. 13) with multiple contracts for drug development and manufacturing work as well as opportunities for Purdue University students to learn more about industry standards.

Lee-Hwa and Allen Chao
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Watson Pharmaceuticals' chairman, president and CEO Allen Chao and his wife, Lee-Hwa Chao, led the dedication of the Chao Center for Industrial Pharmacy & Contract Manufacturing during a ceremony at the new $6.5 million facility they helped to create at 3070 Kent Ave.

The announcement is part of a two-week celebration leading up to Purdue's Homecoming on Saturday (Oct. 15). The events focus on ways Purdue is improving education and helping the state of Indiana as part of the university's strategic plan and $1.5 billion fund-raising campaign.

The Chaos, both Purdue alumni, donated $5 million to build the 12,000-square-foot center, which is one of only five pharmaceutical plants in the country operated for the benefit of a university.

"I've always strived to stay true to my vision of a world with better health care, both through my company and on a personal level," Allen Chao said. "With access to the Chao Center and its staff, Purdue graduates will come away more fully prepared for a career in the pharmaceutical sciences and all of the stringent requirements that come with drug manufacturing."

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The Chao Center will manufacture tablets and capsules for drugmakers as well as offer a full-range of contract pharmaceutical services, such as drug development and testing. Under a contract with its first client, Indianapolis drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co., the center will become the sole producer of Seromycin(r), a generic equivalent of the antibiotic Cycloserine, for the United States. The center also is working with additional clients on several projects, including formulating a dosing procedure for a powder-based product, manufacturing placebo tablets to be used in a human clinical trial, and formulating and manufacturing a new drug-delivery technology (an oral spray).

"Even though the Chao Center is boutique-sized, the amount of paperwork to start up the operation is exactly the same - about 15,000 pages of documentation to ensure that the facility meets safety standards," said Craig W. Davis, the center's director. "This is a working facility, not a project to model correct procedures for manufacturing. Therefore, we can help Purdue give students an in-the-trenches perspective on the pharmacy industry unlike that available at any other university."

Chao Center executives plan to instruct Purdue students enrolled in a pharmacy manufacturing course on cGMP (good manufacturing) practices and guidelines.

"The net revenue from the Chao Center that is returned to Purdue and the School of Pharmacy will be used to assist in furthering the educational opportunities for students and faculty," said John Pezzuto, dean of Purdue's College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Health Sciences. "The Chao Center also will afford our pharmacy students more interaction with students from other areas, especially engineering, and ultimately will be a destination for interns and a target for research projects from a variety of Purdue's colleges and schools."

Brad McKinney (R) and
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Purdue civil engineering majors have the opportunity to enroll in a course in which they design a rotary oxidizer kiln and associated support facilities for pharmaceutical waste that, theoretically, will be located at the center. As part of an MBA student project, some of Purdue's Krannert School of Management students are looking at ways to improve material receiving and handling processes, as well as investigating the feasibility of automating warehouse temperature and humidity mapping procedures.

"The Chao Center is the juxtaposition of Purdue's commitment to improving the state's economy and our drive to enhance the quality of health care," said university President Martin C. Jischke. "New tools and processes to make the health-care industry more efficient are being researched and developed in our new Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. Purdue's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences produces top-notch graduates and consistently is ranked among the top five in the nation, and Purdue Research Park is home to a growing cluster of more than 20 life sciences companies.

"I have no doubt that what students and faculty are able to learn through relationships with the Chao Center will lead to advancements in the pharmaceutical industry and that these advancements someday will impact us all in a personal way."

Jischke also is president of the Purdue Research Foundation, the non-profit organization that is responsible for developing the Purdue Research Park, which owns the limited liability company that operates the Chao Center.

"At Purdue Research Park, we're creating jobs by transferring Purdue discoveries to companies that will grow businesses around these innovations here in Indiana," said Joseph B. Hornett, the foundation's senior vice president, treasurer and chief operating officer. "Purdue also has helped attract some companies that want to be part of the growing research park. With the Chao Center, however, the foundation is moving from the realm of entrepreneurial facilitator into the role of being entrepreneurs ourselves.

"In fact, in the spirit of Purdue Research Park's innovative environment, the Chao Center team already has developed a patented pressure sensor filter device that prevents cross contamination between clean manufacturing rooms."

Full-time employees at the Chao Center number 15, not including four student receptionists and a graduate student. Davis said that he expects to hire three to four more employees in the next 10 months. The center also will employ a graduate student intern each semester.

Chao Center's first student intern, Purdue junior Jessica Brown, said, "Craig Davis asked me at least one tough question each day, such as how Stokes' Law applies to the development of pharmaceuticals. It was my job to research and answer it."

Brown spent her summer internship drafting standard operating procedures, and she even disassembled, cleaned and re-assembled a capsule-making machine.

The capsule-making machine will be used to produce Seromycin(r), one of a handful of antibiotics used (along with other medications) to treat hard-to-cure strains of tuberculosis referred to as multiple drug-resistant TB. Eli Lilly and Co. makes two of the five drugs that are widely prescribed to treat this contagious disease (spread by sneezing and coughing), and Lilly also participates in the Stop TB Partnership project recently launched by the World Health Organization.

"We congratulate Purdue University's Chao Center on this milestone event," said Sidney Taurel, chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly and Co. "The Chao Center is playing an important role in the global fight against multi drug-resistant tuberculosis. In addition to manufacturing much-needed supplies of medicines to treat the disease, the Chao Center has helped to train and provide guidance of sound business management and good manufacturing practices for companies in China and India that are receiving Lilly's drug manufacturing technology."

Davis said, "Along with transferring to the Chao Center the technology to make, test, package and ship Seromycin(r), Eli Lilly and Co. has given us an extremely expensive capsule-filling machine and helped us to design the plant and meet safety and regulatory requirements."

Purdue's School of Pharmacy has 634 students enrolled in the Pharm.D. (doctoral) program, about 100 students in the bachelor's degree program in pharmaceutical sciences, and approximately 110 students working toward graduate degrees in pharmacy. About 700 students also are enrolled in the prepharmacy program. May 2004 Pharm.D. graduates had an average of 4.5 job offers each and an average starting salary last year of more than $92,000.

Source: Jeanine Phipps, media relations, Purdue Research Park, (765) 494-0748 (office), (765) 409-2745 (mobile), jeanine@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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PHOTO CAPTION:
Bryan Katzenmeyer, analytic chemist at the Chao Center explains research capabilities of the newly dedicated Chao Center for Industrial Pharmacy to Lee-Hwa and Allen Chao, the Purdue alumni who donated $5 million dollars to build it. The center includes dissolution test equipment that can simulate human digestive conditions to fine tune pharmaceutical delivery. (Photo/Vincent Walter)

A publication-quality file photo is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/+2005/chaos-tour.jpg

PHOTO CAPTION:
Facilities coordinator Brad McKinney, at right, and David Eubank, manufacturing and facilities manager, test a tablet-making machine at the Chao Center for Industrial Pharmacy & Contract Manufacturing. (Purdue News Service file photo/David Umberger)

A publication-quality file photo is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/+2005/chaocenter-machine.jpg

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