Determining Criticality-Process Parameters and Quality Attributes

As the pharmaceutical industry tries to embrace the methodologies of quality by design (QbD) provided by the FDA’s process validation (PV) guidance (1) and International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) Q8/Q9/Q10 (2-4), many companies are challenged by the evolving concept of criticality as applied to quality attributes and process parameters. Historically, in biopharmaceutical development, criticality has been a frequently arbitrary categorization between important high-risk attributes or parameters and those that carry little or no risk. This binary designation was usually determined during early development for the purposes of regulatory filings, relying heavily on scientific judgment and limited laboratory studies.

Figure 1: Process validation lifecycle.

With the most recent ICH and FDA guidances…