From leaves to drugs
Italian company automates its manufacturing of anti-cancer compound

Indena develops innovative drugs and needed a flexible solution to automate its plant. The system should be used to control the process as well as managing the instrumentation assets. Finally the company found an automation solution including conformance to FDA code of practice, 21 CFR Part 11.
Indena is the world’s leading company dedicated to identifying, developing and producing active ingredients from plants for use in the pharmaceutical and health industries. They are one of the main suppliers of a potential new anti-cancer compound that has been approved by the FDA for phase 1 clinical trials. The Settala facility, near Milan, extracts anti-cancer compounds from the leaves of a plant, then supplies the extracted product to a major pharmaceutical company for processing into the finished drug. Emerson have implemented the automation solution for Indena based on PIantWeb digital plant architecture including a DeltaV digital automation system, using Foundation Fieldbus technology.