Drug Factory Microbiome: Top Three Actionable Challenges and Prospects

To the Editor: Microbiome research is advancing on diverse and multiple frontiers. An interesting and emerging arena is the microbiome of built environments and how it affects human health and lifestyle. Recently, drug factories were studied as interesting built environments in which humans, machines, and pharmaceutical ingredients interact, in a quite clean environment (which ranges from fully aseptic, in case of parenteral products, to monitored clean areas, for other types of formulations). However, studies addressing microbiomes of drug factories, clean rooms, or production lines remain scarce. Looking forward to 2020, we highlight three actionable emerging challenges in drug factory microbiome research, which might transform to prospects for clinical or discovery science innovation if they are adequately and promptly addressed.