Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing VI

An ECI Conference Series

October 20 – 24, 2024
Lansdowne Resort & Conference Center
Leesburg, Virginia

Conference Organization

Conference Chairs

Ana Azevedo, Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal
Aaron Noyes, Apogee Therapeutics
Kevin Brower, Sanofi, USA

Digital Archives
ICB V Presentations & Abstracts

About This Conference

The Integrated and Continuous Biomanufacturing (ICB) Conference is ECI’s premiere international conference in continuous and integrated biomanufacturing. As global competitive pressures continue to force companies to innovate to succeed, integrated continuous processing creates opportunities to accelerate process development and reduce manufacturing costs while enhancing flexibility and product quality. Ultimately, these collective improvements in efficiency and quality will help us better achieve our primary objective in the field – to increase patient access to transformative therapies. 

Impressive technological advances have been made over the past decade to enable the implementation of continuous bioprocessing. ICB VI aims to build on the strong momentum generated in previous conferences of this series by developing an exciting and engaging program showcasing progress in implementation of integrated continuous biomanufacturing technologies for GMP biomanufacturing via case studies of clinical and commercial bioprocesses. ICB VI will highlight progress across the ICB discipline, including areas related to Regulatory Affairs, Simplification, Emerging Therapeutic Modalities, Process Analytical Technology (PAT), Sustainability, as well as Modeling, Automation, and Control. 

ICB VI will bring together leading scientists and engineers from academia, industry and regulatory who are actively engaged in creating and enabling integrated continuous biomanufacturing. We look forward to welcoming invitees to Leesburg, Virginia, USA to reflect on the field’s progress and to harness our collective capabilities to drive towards a more efficient and sustainable future. 

On behalf of the ICB Conference Steering Committee, we are also pleased to announce that ICB VII is planned to occur in Europe in the Fall of 2025. This will return the biannual conference series to ‘odd’ calendar years. Additional details on organization and site selection will be shared at a future date. 

Sincerely, 
Ana Azevedo, Kevin Brower, Aaron Noyes

Keynote Speakers

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2024 ICB Award Recipient: Chetan Goudar

The ICB Award Committee is thrilled to announce that Dr. Chetan Goudar of Amgen has been selected as the recipient of the prestigious 2024 ICB Award.

Dr. Goudar earned his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of British Columbia under the mentorship of Jamie Piret. Since beginning his career in 1999, Dr. Goudar has been at the forefront of advancing biotechnology processing, initially at Bayer and, since 2012, at Amgen. Over the past 25 years, he has skillfully integrated his industrial responsibilities with groundbreaking scientific research and has been a staunch supporter of the international biotechnology community, and continuous bioprocessing in particular.

Notably, Dr. Goudar was a pivotal figure in the establishment of the ICB conference series, starting in 2013. He has played a crucial role in organizing and overseeing every ICB conference to date. At Amgen, he currently serves as Head of Manufacturing and Clinical Supply, leading his team in advancing multiple clinical and commercial products through ICB-enabled GMP technology.

Dr. Goudar’s contributions to the biotechnology community are extensive and impactful. He has authored numerous publications, reviewed grants, and organized various biotechnology conferences and events. His efforts have significantly advanced the ICB field and the broader biotechnology landscape. As a co-chair for the first three ECI ICB conferences—held in Barcelona (2013), Berkeley (2015), and Cascais (2017)—and as a dedicated member of the ICB Steering Committee, he has continually demonstrated his commitment to the field. Additionally, Chetan has actively supported other key biotechnology conferences, such as ECI Cell Culture Engineering and ACS BIOT.

Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Goudar and his teams have driven innovation in multiple biotech domains, particularly within the ICB framework. His work includes advancements in cell line engineering, drug substance development, and analytical methods for over 75 Investigational New Drug (IND) applications across various therapeutic modalities. Many commercial products have emerged from these efforts, underscoring the impact of Dr. Goudar’s work.

Beyond his technical achievements, Chetan is celebrated as a leader, mentor, and Scientific Advisory Boards member.  His friendly, optimistic, and supportive demeanor, coupled with his professionalism, has inspired many colleagues and teams to excel in their careers and projects.

We are delighted to honor Dr. Chetan Goudar with the 2024 ICB Award.

Congratulations, Chetan!

Session Descriptions

Advances in automation, process control, and PAT that enable expanded ICB deployment

Session Chairs:
Anurag S. Rathore, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Leon Pybus, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies

ICB based approaches provide a step-by-step transition from batch to more continuous modes of operation by either intensifying single unit operations or integrating process steps with the ultimate vision of fully automated flow-through continuous processing. The actual requirement for optimized clinical and commercial manufacturing may lie somewhere in between an end-to-end batch and fully continuous flow-through process. Nonetheless, increased ICB operation increases system and technology complexity, necessitating greater automation orchestration and control. Furthermore, ICB could allow real-time release testing of the drug substance or drug product. However, this vision requires the implementation of process analytical technologies (PAT) to identify and control processes when unplanned deviations in feed or raw material attributes occur.

Therefore, this session will focus on automation, process control and PAT that pave the way for more intensified ICB and drug substance real-time release. Priority will be given to submissions that present implementations into commercial or clinical manufacturing environments. Subtopics of interest include process monitoring, process modeling, in-process analytics, digital twins and data analytics with an ICB context.

ICB Convergence: Case Studies in Simplification and Standardization

Session Chairs:
Elizabeth Goodrich, MilliporeSigma 
Joanna Pezzini, PAK BioSolutions

While continuous processes are more complex than batch due to a high level of dependence between simultaneously operating steps, the industry has made steady gains to recognize areas for improvement and address challenges.  Companies are probing strategies to balance the ideal of a fully continuous process with the pragmatic introduction of simpler intensified processes that deliver a similar level of benefit.  Much like a standardized process template and readily available full-scale systems enabled the dramatic expansion and simplification of batch mAb processing, technologies and process knowledge for continuous processing are currently maturing to drive increased implementation of fully connected and continuous processes. 

In this session we would like to highlight progress within the industry, and particularly across multiple companies and vendors, where simplification and standardization of equipment, single-use technologies, digital strategies, and/or automation have enabled intensified processing and have resulted in improved efficiency, flexibility, and performance.

We invite contributions that demonstrate implementation of continuous processes across multiple unit operations and discuss strategies for and challenges with the interconnection of these steps.Presentations that demonstrate the use of modeling to solve real-world problems of intensified process design and control are also encouraged; these may include tools and other efforts to evaluate mass and flow balances, residence time distributions, hardware sizing, and consumable sizing based on cadence. Discussion is welcomed on areas where the industry could benefit from additional standardization to lower the hurdle of achieving a continuous process.

ICB GMP Implementation: Celebrating Achievements and Lessons Learned

Session Chairs:
Lara Fernandez-Cerezo, Merck & Co.
Jun Tian, WuXi Biologics

Traditional biologics manufacturing processes in a batch mode are generally costly and time-consuming.  Continuous processing on the other hand may produce higher productivity with greater consistency in product quality, and may reduce equipment and facility footprint significantly lowering capital and manufacturing costs. As such, Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing (ICB) has been gradually and steadily adopted in the biopharmaceutical industry for clinical or commercial manufacturing in GMP environments. 

In this session, we aim to cover industry advances when implementing ICB into GMP operations, but also encourage talks to cover the challenges experienced during the adoption and their mitigation strategies.

More specifically, we invite cross-functional talks encompassing ICB process tech transfer; ICB equipment and process validation; ICB equipment sizing, facility design and construction; and notably differences and considerations between clinical and commercial ICB processes.

Strategic case studies will also be fostered in this session, covering for example consumables, material management and supply/demand projections performed for ICB-manufactured products.

We are striving towards a session based on real-world case studies with multi-disciplinary talks leveraging input from different functional areas such as process development, regulatory, operations, supply chain, commercialization, validation, process automation, procurement and quality teams.

Leveraging ICB for a Sustainable Future

Session Chairs:
Sara Badr, University of Tokyo
Kerry Love, Sunflower Therapeutics

Enabling advances in biotechnology to address the needs of our growing global population will require reexamination and adaptation of legacy biomanufacturing approaches, including ICB. Ensuring sustainability requires balancing the three pillars of environmental, social, and economic development. What is the role of ICB in realizing a more sustainable future?

In this session, we invite presentations that address the following topics:

1)    Modeling the impact of the industry: What is the industry’s environmental footprint and how can we reduce it? What innovations can help conserve resources and raw materials? What are the sustainability indicators to best describe the impact of biopharmaceutical production?

2)    Tradeoffs in and among sustainability pillars: What are the choices biomanufacturers are making between environmental, social and economic impact? How can they be quantified and resolved? How could ICB factor into decision making to reduce compromise overall?

3)    Material developments: What innovative process materials can reduce footprints? How can different stakeholders (suppliers, process developers,..) incentivize changes towards these innovations while balancing risk?

4)   Addressing the social impact: What is needed from the industry to ensure the well-being of global communities? How can ICB be leveraged for sustainable in-region production of diverse products, including new business models that encourage bioeconomy growth?

5)      Industrial biotechnology and alternative foods: How can ICB expand its relevance to alternative foods, enzymes and other commodity biotechnology products? What are the potential negative impacts of large-scale production of cellular agriculture and precision fermentation and how can ICB mitigate these?

6)  Regional, and regulatory aspects of sustainability: What is the role of the regulators in developing more sustainable processes and products? What are the implications of regional constraints on global production?

Regulatory Science for Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing

Session Chairs:
TBA

As ICB continues to progress towards implementation across the industry, Regulatory Science will play an increasingly critical role to further adoption of ICB technology across a broad range of processes, modalities, and companies. Foundational relationships have been established via a range of regulatory forums and means of interaction, whether via informal health authority engagement, participation in consortia, or formal engagements across INDs, BLAs, and MAAs. Accordingly, a significant body of concrete ICB cases have emerged demonstrating the applicability and adaptability of current regulatory frameworks to enable the development and both clinical and commercial implementation of ICB to manufacture medicines for patients. 

In this session, we welcome case studies describing regulatory engagements for the implementation of ICB technology in practice. These case studies may describe work done to establish and apply regulatory strategy within a development program or in cross-industry consortia. Case study examples may include description of IND filing strategy, including approaches for engagement in new technology forums (such as, but not limited to ETT and CATT), preIND meeting strategy and corresponding briefing book development, and strategy or examples of responses to questions posed by health agencies during Type C, IND, or BLA/MAA activities. 

Additional topic areas may also include regulatory considerations and associated case studies for conversion between batch, hybrid ICB, and more fully continuous applications of ICB technology, including related comparability paradigms. Case studies describing experiences preparing for inspection, such as by internal audits or mock inspections are of particular interest as are descriptions of common themes across agencies and key heterogeneity experienced during global regulatory submissions. 

Submissions are welcome from all members of the regulatory science continuum, including applicants (innovators, CDMOs, etc), health authorities, vendors, and academia. In all cases, preference will be given to abstracts that include specific case studies that detail ICB and regulatory science in practice. 

What’s new(er): Applications of ICB for Emerging Modalities

Session Chairs:
Stefano Menegatti, NC State University
Aravindan Ragendran, Pfizer

Novel modalities, including cells (cell therapies, cultured meat, seafood, dairy and eggs), viruses and viral vectors, bionanoparticles (LNPs, extracellular vesicles, virus-like particles) and nucleic acids (plasmids, mRNA) have emerged as a promising new class of biotherapeutics. While impressive advances have been made in continuous manufacturing strategies for small molecule and protein therapeutics, these new entities introduce complexities with varying sizes and biophysical properties requiring a re-evaluation of current technologies.

Join us for this session dedicated to the application of ICB strategies to the manufacture of new modalities, now including the exciting field of cellular agriculture. We will explore concepts of continuous flow and integrated unit operations control strategies aimed at producing high quality, cost effective bioproducts. Topics will cover a broad spectrum, including but not limited to:

• State-of-the-art technologies in continuous upstream and downstream processes applied to emerging modalities
• Integration of unit operations for continuous processes, including novel approaches to accommodate unique challenges encountered with emerging modalities
• Bespoke PAT and control strategies necessitated by the unique properties of the modality
• Systems approaches to improve efficiency
• Implementation of continuous platforms with perspectives such as scale-down models and cost of goods analysis
• Navigating the evolving regulatory frameworks for new modalities and continuous manufacturing

Workshop Descriptions

Coming soon

Call for Abstracts

Abstract submissions are now closed.

Poster Presenter Guidelines

Poster dimensions: 1.0 meter wide x 1.5 meter high (portrait style)

Poster Preparation Guidelines [DOC]

Preliminary Program

Conference Fees and Registration

The conference fee includes the following: Conference registration, accommodations (nights of Sunday (Oct. 20), Monday (Oct. 21), Tuesday (Oct. 22), and Wednesday (Oct. 23); check-out on Thursday (Oct. 24)), meals (with the exception of Tuesday dinner), coffee breaks and excursion to the Smithsonian Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center on Tuesday.  Dinner on Tuesday after the excursion is on your own. Incidental fees (laundry, minibar etc.) are billed to your personal account by the hotel.

ALL PARTICIPANTS (INCLUDING MEMBERS OF THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE AND INVITED SPEAKERS) ARE REQUIRED TO REGISTER.

Please note that registration for this conference is by invitation only.

The conference fees are:

Participant (single occupancy or sharing room with a guest; guest fee additional)	US $3,425
Participant (sharing a room with another participant)	US $2,825
Bona fide Graduate Students & Postdoctoral Scholars (sharing a room with another student/post-doc) (Those in this category must upload proof of current status during registration – copy of current Student ID or a letter from your University confirming your student status)	US $2,415
**Fees for Guest/accompanying person sharing bedroom with a participant. (Includes all conference included meals and excursion) Guests/accompanying persons may not attend technical sessions.	US $850
**Fees for Guest/accompanying person sharing bedroom with a participant. (Room ONLY, NO meals and NO excursion) Guests/accompanying persons may not attend technical sessions.	US $95

If you plan to bring children to the conference, please contact Renee Smith for pricing.

Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing VI is an invitation-only event. If you would like to be considered for an invitation to attend this event, please indicate your interest: Sign-in to your account and Request A Mailing for the ICB VI Conference. 

Pre and Post Conference Hotel Reservations

Coming soon

Sponsorship Opportunities

Conference Sponsors

Special Issue of Biotechnology Progress

We are excited to announce that there will be a special issue on “Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing” in Biotechnology Progress. This issue aims to capture recent advances in ICB, including topics that were presented and discussed at ICB V in Barcelona in 2022. The submission deadline is July 1, 2023. If you have questions, please contact Jason Walther at jason.walther@sanofi.com.

Venue Information

The conference will take place at the Lansdowne Resort and Spa

44050 Woodridge Parkway
Leesburg, VA 20176

This AAA Four Diamond award-winning resort is the Mid-Atlantic’s premier destination for conferences with unmatched service and facilities, a beautiful terrace with panoramic views of the grounds and golf course,  experienced staff and outstanding guest room accommodations. Lansdowne, located on 500 picturesque acres, is recognized as a Virginia Green Lodging facility. The resort is only about 12 miles from Dulles Airport and about 30 miles outside of Washington, DC.

Lansdowne has on site high technology conference support, complimentary high speed WiFi coverage throughout the resort and most of the 36 meeting rooms are organized in a compact conference center format for maximum flexibility.  In addition, the conference facilities include refreshment kiosks that are far above the standard coffee break and are available throughout the day.

Conference participants will have complimentary use of the 24-hour fitness center, hot tubs, sports courts, indoor (and seasonal) outdoor pools, billiards, fire pits and bikes (based on availability).  Water activities include kayaking and fishing on the Potomac River.

Each guestroom has bottled water, Lavazza coffee and coffeemaker, tea, HD LCD TVs, bathrobes, hair dryer and quality bath amenities. All guestrooms are non-smoking. Lansdowne also has a spa (Spa Minérale) which offers traditional spa services.  It features relaxation lounges, steam rooms, dry saunas, whirlpools and hair, makeup and nail services.

Transportation Information

Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) is just 20 minutes from Lansdowne Resort. The next closest is Regan National Airport (DCA), which is about one hour away.

Airport shuttles

The resort provides a paid shuttle service from Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) for $35 per person each way. Shuttles require advance reservations. For airport transportation, please schedule it here and use booking code 2021RM1.

Taxis and rideshares are also available at the airport.

Driving Directions from Washington Dulles Airport

• Follow signs to VA-28 N
• After 4.3 miles, exit left onto VA-7 W toward Leesburg/Winchester
• After 2.5 miles, exit onto Ashburn Village Blvd. toward State Rt. 2020 N
• After 0.1 miles turn left onto Riverside Parkway
• After 0.6 miles, turn right onto Woodridge Parkway
• Continue another 0.6 miles on Woodridge Parkway to the resort

What address should I enter in my GPS?

The resort’s GPS address is: 44050 Woodridge Parkway, Leesburg, Virginia 20176

Conference History

Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing

October 20 – 24, 2013, Castelldefels, Spain
Conference Chairs: Konstantin Konstantinov, Genzyme-Sanofi, USA; Chetan Goudar, Amgen, USA; Nigel Titchener-Hooker, University College London, UK

Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing II

November 1 – 5, 2015, Berkeley, California, USA
Conference Chairs: Chetan Goudar, Amgen, USA; Suzanne Farid, University College London, UK; Christopher Hwang, Genzyme-Sanofi, USA; Karol Lacki, Novo Nordisk, Denmark

Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing III

September 17-21, 2017, Cascais, Portugal
Conference Chairs: Suzanne Farid, University College London, UK; Chetan Goudar, Amgen, USA; Paula Alves, IBET, Portugal; Veena Warikoo, Axcella Health, Inc., USA

Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing IV

October 6-10, 2019, Brewster (Cape Cod), Massachusetts, USA
Conference Chairs: Veena Warikoo, Roche, USA; Alois Jungbauer, BOKU, Austria; Jon Coffman, AstraZeneca, USA; Jason, Walther, Sanofi, USA

Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing V

October 9-13, 2022, Sitges, Spain
Conference Chairs: Ana Azevedo, Técnico Lisboa, Portugal, Jason Walther, Sanofi, USA, Rohini Deshpande, Amgen, USA

General Information About ECI

Engineering Conferences International (ECI) is a not-for-profit, global engineering conferences program, originally established in 1962 that provides opportunities for the exploration of problems and issues of concern to engineers and scientists from many disciplines.

The format of the conference provides morning and late afternoon or evening sessions in which major presentations are made. Poster sessions will be scheduled for evening discussion as well. Available time is included during the afternoons for ad hoc meetings, informal discussions, and/or recreation. This format is designed to enhance rapport among participants and promote dialogue on the development of the meeting. We believe the conferences have been instrumental in generating ideas and disseminating information to a greater extent than is possible through more conventional forums.

All participants are expected both to attend the entire conference and to contribute actively to the discussions. The recording/photographing of lectures and presentations is forbidden. As ECI conferences take place in an informal atmosphere, casual clothing is the usual attire.

Smoking is prohibited at ECI conferences and conference functions.