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At the heart of our work to develop innovative, cutting-edge medicines, is our expertise and commitment to green and sustainable science. With patients as our focus, we strive to deliver dual value in a BMS therapeutic, a high-quality medication that will treat their disease while preserving our environment. We do this by ensuring that the methods we use to prepare our medications:
As we continue our journey to integrate green and sustainability principles into our product life cycle, we use predictive analytics to inform design, guide innovation and drive a continuous improvement mindset during development. Our data-driven approach is enabled by rigorous tracking of key metrics and the communication of its impact. This “Green by Design” approach offers a strategic pathway to building a sustainable future, as shown in the broad overall reductions in waste (as measured by Process Mass Intensity, or PMI) achieved across the small molecule portfolio between 2016-2020.
Green By Design
average PMI reduction across
9 projects between 2016-2020,
eliminating >1,000 MT waste.
This greenness score provides a useful and quantitative method, complementary to mass-based metrics such as PMI and derived from the 12 principles of green chemistry and the 12 principles of green engineering. It also considers the inherent safety of a process, from both a worker exposure and process hazards perspective—making it easier to make complex decisions involving trade-offs between improved efficiency and enhanced process safety. While this tool is currently only useful in evaluating small molecules, we continue to analyze how we can expand this methodology to assess other important therapeutic modalities, including synthetic peptides, oligonucleotides, antibody–drug conjugates and biologics.
In addition to tracking waste reduction, we are committed to calculating “Greenness” scores for all clinical deliveries in our small molecule portfolio, conducting high-level Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) for small molecule drug substances entering the commercial space and visualizing our sustainability metrics using an integrated dashboard. Our suite of Green by Design tools is used to help guide decisions during development involving trade-offs between improved mass-based efficiency versus other environmental measures, such as solvent selection. The LCA tool, developed by the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute Pharma Roundtable, enables the assessment of additional sustainability metrics not tracked by our in-house scorecard. As demonstrated for deucravacitinib, a promising first-in-class treatment for psoriasis in Phase III clinical trials, the Green by Design approach led to tremendous sustainability improvements for people and the environment.
Impact of applying BMS’ Green by Design approach during the progression of deucravacitinib (TYK 2 inhibitor in Phase III) from its initial synthetic route to its commercial synthetic route:
| Change | Annual Savings* | |
|---|---|---|
| Cumulative PMI (kg/kg API) | -74% | 989K kg waste |
| Energy (MJ/kg API) | -73% | 66K MJ energy |
| GWP (kg CO2 equiv/kg API) | -63% | 2.8MM kg CO2e |
| Water depletion (kg/kg API) | -78% | 10.5MM kg water |
| Cost ($/kg API) | -53% | $18MM |
* Based on estimated 800 kg API/year at peak volume
Believing that innovation and collaboration are at the core of our mission to create safe, economical and sustainable processes to supply high-quality active ingredients for the medicines we deliver to patients, we partner with external companies and academics to invent and develop new capabilities to both accelerate our development and improve our sustainability footprint. Most notably, we recently teamed up with the Scripps Research Institute to introduce disruptive innovation in the field of stereoselective thiophosphate synthesis, leading not only to remarkable sustainability improvements on the STING-Interferon program, but having broad implications in oligonucleotide drug discovery.
Moving forward, we are committed to continuing to focus on the above Green by Design concepts and technologies, as well as striving to:
| Step Greenness (%) | Projects (#) |
|---|---|
| 24% | 2 |
| 27% | 1 |
| 30% | 1 |
| 33% | 6 |
| 36% | 7 |
| 38% | 13 |
| 41% | 9 |
| 44% | 9 |
| 47% | 14 |
| 50% | 5 |
| 53% | 13 |
| 56% | 5 |
| 59% | 4 |
| 62% | 3 |
| 65% | 1 |
| 68% | 1 |
| 71% | 2 |
| Step Greenness (%) | Projects (#) |
|---|---|
| 15% | 4 |
| 30% | 19 |
| 45% | 23 |
| 60% | 13 |
| 75% | 13 |
| 90% | 9 |
| 105% | 8 |
| 120% | 4 |
| 225% | 1 |
| Program Name | Campaign Purp. | Year | Greenness/Step | PMI/Step (kg/kg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign Purp.: campaign - 1 | Year: 2016 | Greenness/Step: 42% | 80% | |
| Program Name: Program A | Campaign Purp.: campaign - 2 | Year: 2018 | Greenness/Step: 53% | PMI/Step (kg/kg): 58% |
| Campaign Purp.: campaign - 3 | Year: 2021 | Greenness/Step: 55% | PMI/Step (kg/kg): 48% |
