Okay, time for part 2...
I'm not going to be including more history in this report, but if you missed the first one and would like a bit of context you can check it out here. I will be trying my best to explain what is going on in between the photos though, however, I am not exactly qualified within this industry so apologies in advance if my explanations are brief or outright wrong
This next part features some factory interiors that absolutely blew my innocent mind.EXPLORE
So, the next part of the facility I'm covering is one of the biggest, and (probably) one of the oldest API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) plants on the site. The rest of them featured more modern designs in their exteriors, but this old beauty was still made of brick.
At the doorways into the main factory floors on each level, you would find these "saver" sets. They would be used for making a safe and effective escape from hazardous situations, in which the air is no longer safe to breathe inside. They feature an escape hood with positive pressure and will provide the user with a 10 minute supply of air to escape from environments where smoke or toxic fumes may be present.
Before I checked out the main factory floors, I decided to work my way up to the roof first. On each level, there were entries to the main factory floor, and another door leading to the electrical control rooms that supported all the hardware on that level.
The access to the control rooms on each floor meant going across a small balcony, before entering another door back inside.
The shots from the control rooms were taken in complete darkness, so I tried my best to illuminate the room with a couple of torches... The rooms were pretty much filled wall to wall, floor to ceiling with switchgears, and other related electrical equipment.
Once I had reached the roof, the sun was high in the sky, and it was warming up nicely. It was a nice little spot to chill out for a few minutes, although I couldn't hang around long as I was very excited to see what the main floors had to offer me.
The tallest building you can see here seems to look the most modern and is of a comparative size to that of the one I was currently on. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get inside this plant, even though it was the main target for me for the next two returning visits... Really bummed I wasn't able to get in that one.
Another look at all that absolutely beautiful pipework.
You could see for miles from up here, so taken a few quick snaps of the Prince of Wales Suspension Bridge.
Would be rude not to get some stairs shots, before we check out the machinery.
"And now, our feature presentation..."
So, the main API produced in this building would have been Rosuvastatin (or at least this building produced the crude ingredients for it, and another of the plants would have produced the final substance. Sold under the trade name Crestor, it is a statin medication, used to prevent cardiovascular disease in those at high risk and to treat abnormal lipids.
EDIT: I believe it was actually the crude ingredients for Quetiapine Urethane AKA Seroquel that was produced in this building, and not those for Rosuvastatin. Although I am not completely sure, and it would seem likely that the ingredients for both drugs were made in here. Just bare this in mind if you notice something in any of the following pics that might not make sense if you have any knowledge of this kind of industry.
Common side effects include abdominal pain, nausea, headaches, and muscle pains. Like all statins, rosuvastatin works by inhibiting an enzyme found in the liver that plays a role in producing cholesterol.
From my brief research, it would seem that Hibitane is more commonly known as Chlorhexidine. It is a disinfectant and antiseptic that is used for skin disinfection before surgery and to sterilize surgical instruments. I am unsure whether this chemical was used in the production of Rovustatin, but it seems more likely to me that it was being extracted as a perhaps a by-product. Any further insights into this would be appreciated!
Some of the machinery had already been removed.
Crestor was billed as a "super-statin" during its clinical development; the claim was that it offers high potency and improved cholesterol reduction compared to rivals in the class.
First launched in 2003, sales of rosuvastatin were $129 million and $908 million in 2003, and 2004, respectively, with a total patient treatment population of over four million by the end of 2004. In 2013, it was the fourth-highest selling drug in the United States, accounting for approximately $5.2 billion in sales.
Nice bit of signage here.
In October 2003, several months after its introduction in Europe, Richard Horton, the editor of the medical journal The Lancet, criticized the way Crestor had been introduced. "AstraZeneca's tactics in marketing its cholesterol-lowering drug, rosuvastatin, raise disturbing questions about how drugs enter clinical practice and what measures exist to protect patients from inadequately investigated medicines," according to his editorial.
The Lancet's editorial position is that the data for Crestor's superiority relies too much on extrapolation from the lipid profile data (surrogate end-points) and too little on hard clinical end-points, which are available for other statins that had been on the market longer. I'm guessing this essentially means that they used data from testing other similar statins, rather than properly testing rosuvastatin (not exactly the kind of info you want to be reading when people are already concerned about a certain vaccine produced by AZ!)
AstraZeneca responded by stating that few drugs had been tested so successfully on so many patients. In correspondence published in The Lancet, AstraZeneca's CEO Sir Tom McKillop called the editorial "flawed and incorrect" and slammed the journal for making "such an outrageous critique of a serious, well-studied medicine."
In 2004, the consumer interest organization Public Citizen filed a Citizen's Petition with the FDA, asking that Crestor be withdrawn from the US market. On 11 March 2005, the FDA issued a letter to Sidney M. Wolfe, M.D. of Public Citizen both denying the petition and providing an extensive detailed analysis of findings that demonstrated no basis for concerns about rosuvastatin compared with the other statins approved for marketing in the United States.
On each floor, you would see these blueprints that I assume shows how the ingredients would be produced.
If you look carefully at the label at the bottom, you can see that it says "ZAFIRLUKAST VENTING" - Zafirlukast was used for the chronic treatment of asthma, which was not produced at Avlon Works at the time I was there. However, after doing a little digging it would seem that this drug was produced here up until a point, as it shows up on profit reports, and the R&D labs here have also released research relating to improving this drug, which is cited in medical journals.
Damn ladder ruining this shot.
Continued below...
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