The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month warned Indian generic drugmaker Lupin Limited over three good manufacturing practice (GMP) violations at its facility in Maharashtra, India that identified issues with the company’s written procedures for equipment cleaning, its written procedures for monitoring and controlling the performance of processing steps and the “failure to investigate all critical deviations.”

The FDA said the company “performed multiple risk assessments with the purpose to verify whether existing cleaning procedures and practices eliminate or reduce genotoxic impurities … generated through the manufacture of [redacted] drugs after you detected [redacted] impurities in your [active pharmaceutical ingredient] API.” The company also performed risk assessments to determine whether its cleaning procedures reduced the risk of cross-contamination of intermediates and API. However, FDA said the risk assessments “lacked data to support that existing equipment cleaning procedures are effective in removing [redacted] along with residual API from each respective piece of equipment to acceptable levels. “The identification of genotoxic impurities in quantities near their established limits suggests excursions are possible. All intermediates and API manufactured on non-dedicated equipment used to manufacture [redacted] drugs should be subject to validated sampling and analytical testing to ensure they are not contaminated with unacceptable levels of genotoxic impurities,” FDA said.

At heart this warning letter shows a major weakness in many company’s risk management approach, they use the risk assessment to replace technical inquiry, instead of as a tool to determine the appropriateness of technical understanding and as a way to manage the uncertainty around technical knowledge.

A significant point in the current Q9 draft is to deal with this issue, which we see happen again and again. Risk management cannot tell you whether your cleaning procedures are effective or not. Only a validated testing scheme can. Risk management looks at the aggregate and evaluates possibilities.