Dr. SERENA PANIGHELLO

Senior Scientist/SG Lab Analytics
Stevanato Group S.p.A., IT

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​​​​​Bio​

Serena Panighello is a research scientist at EMEA Technology Excellence Center, Stevanato Group. Her role is mainly related to the study of glass corrosion mechanisms and container-drug interaction consultancy. She is involved on the advanced analytical services that TEC Lab offers to the Pharma customers to understand the containers properties and performances with respect to the customer needs and to mitigate and reduce the risk of interaction of containers with the drugs. She earned a PhD in Chemical Sciences at Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy) within a joint research program with the National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana (Slovenia). During the PhD she was awarded with the Paul Award for the best presentation at the New Researchers Forum during the SGT (Society of Glass Technology) annual Conference in Durham (UK).​

​Presentation ​

​Glass Quality: Factors that Affect Surface Chemistry in Glass Conversion to Vials

During the forming process of a vial from glass tube, temperatures of up to 1200°C are applied to adjust the glass viscosity. This process has a significant impact since the percentage of some elements measured on the inner surface of the vial can be higher than that measured on the corresponding glass tube.

Highly sensitive surface analytical techniques provide information on the outer glass container layer and they can help to understand mechanism/process and kinetic events that can occur during the shelf life of a pharma product.

Basic research on glass surface chemistry can be very helpful in developing knowledge and understanding that could feed into industry “Quality by Design” approaches. It is the surface, the outermost layer of a solid material that really defines the physico-chemical behavior of a container.