Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis

Tryfon Digkas

Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Process Analytical Technology

Ottergemsesteenweg 460
B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
Tel.: +32-9-264.83.55
Fax: +32-9-222.82.36
E-mail:

Biography

Tryfon Digkas is currently a PhD fellow in Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Process Analytical Technology (PAT) at Ghent University, specializing in the implementation of PAT in pharmaceutical continuous processing.

Tryfon is a licensed pharmacist since 2014. He obtained his Master’s degree in industrial pharmacy, in 2018, from University of Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, Romania. For his Master’s thesis, he earned a research scholarship, working for 3 months at the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Process Analytical Technology at Gent University (Prof. Dr. De Beer). For his Master’s thesis, he investigated the application of hot melt extrusion (HME) to produce drug-loaded filaments for the development of oral 3D-printed dosage forms and compressed tablets.  

In February 2019, he received a scholarship for his PhD research at Ghent University. His research focuses on the continuous production of pharmaceutical semi-solids with drug-loaded lipid nanoparticles as also the implementation of PAT systems for process and product understanding.

PAT for continuous production of semi-solids

Over the last years, the pharmaceutical industry has driven towards the implementation of continuous manufacturing processes as a means of time and cost-efficient strategy. Compared to the conventional batch-wise production, an innovative continuous manufacturing process could provide various benefits to society, patients, manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies:

  • Improving the supply chain by reducing storage and intermediary shipping costs
  • Reduce time-to-market and cost of goods
  • Ease automatization and flexibility
  • Agility and reduced scale-up efforts
  • Real time quality assurance 
  • Individualized Manufacturing

Moreover, the implementation of PAT systems in pharmaceutical manufacturing delivers significant reduction in production cost together with improved product quality. The advantages of PAT can be quantified as follows:

  • Increase product and process understanding
  • Reduce waste during production 
  • Reduce development and scale up
  • Improvement in quality and consistency of quality 
  • Reduce energy and material use