The 'Church' of safe transport packaging

Cold chain is a term that typically describes the distribution channel used to ship drugs in the refrigerated temperature range of 2ºC to 8ºC. But Edward Church (shown), executive director of the International Safe Transit Assn., explains, "I would refer to this environment as the temperature-controlled supply chain, not just the cold chain, because we work with a variety of temperatures, although the 2º to 8º Celsius range is used most prevalently with pharmaceuticals and biological products." In this article, Church identifies factors to consider when shipping temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical and biological products.