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The clinical success of mRNA–lipid nanoparticle vaccines transformed lipid nanoparticle technology from a specialised drug delivery field into a central modality for modern biopharmaceutical development. That success demonstrated that nucleic acid therapeutics can be manufactured, distributed, and deployed at unprecedented speed when formulation science, process engineering, and regulatory urgency align. Yet the same success also exposed how dependent LNP products remain on tightly constrained composition, process history, and cold-chain stability. The central problem is that processes optimised rapidly under pandemic conditions do not automatically constitute robust manufacturing platforms. Many LNP processes remain product-specific, empirically tuned, and sensitive to changes in lipid composition, aqueous phase conditions, mixing geometry, and downstream handling. The language of “platform” is therefore often stronger than the underlying evidence for generalisable process robustness. The review maps the structural and functional logic of LNP platforms, evaluates how mRNA delivery requirements shaped formulation choices, and assesses preclinical and manufacturing evidence across laboratory, preclinical, and scalable production contexts. It identifies recurrent fragility points including mixing sensitivity, particle heterogeneity, aggregation, mRNA degradation, storage instability, and incomplete comparability evidence after process change. Five tables summarise platform design, mRNA delivery requirements, manufacturing evidence, fragility points, and a system design strategy for robust LNP production. The post-mRNA era requires a shift from emergency product development to platform-centred system design. LNP manufacturing must become modular, measurable, scalable, and quality-resilient rather than merely reproducible under narrowly defined conditions. Achieving this transition is essential if LNP technologies are to move beyond COVID-19 vaccines into broader therapeutic applications and more equitable global health deployment.

The pharmaceutical industry is a significant contributor to environmental pollution, yet the sustainability of pharmaceutical technologies themselves has received less sustained attention than clinical efficacy, quality assurance, manufacturability, and cost. Pharmaceutical products are commonly evaluated through therapeutic performance and regulatory compliance, while the material, energy, solvent, water, packaging, and waste implications of their production and disposal remain secondary. This imbalance is no longer defensible as medicines become embedded within wider debates on planetary health, industrial decarbonisation, chemical pollution, and responsible innovation. Current pharmaceutical technology paradigms often depend on linear manufacturing models in which raw materials, solvents, excipients, packaging components, and delivery devices move through production and use before entering waste streams. This model is particularly problematic where complex formulations, multi-material packaging, single-use components, and persistent active substances create environmental burdens that are difficult to recover or neutralise. The problem is not only the presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment, but also the technological logic that normalises excess material throughput as an acceptable cost of product performance. This critical review examines sustainable pharmaceutical technologies through three connected lenses: green manufacturing, excipient burden, and circular design principles. Green manufacturing addresses how pharmaceutical products are synthesised, processed, purified, and scaled. Excipient burden focuses on the hidden environmental and functional load created by supposedly inactive formulation ingredients. Circular design principles extend the discussion beyond production efficiency toward products, packaging, and delivery systems designed for reduction, recovery, reuse, and responsible end-of-life management. The review identifies that continuous manufacturing, flow chemistry, process intensification, biocatalysis, solvent reduction, process mass intensity, and life-cycle assessment provide important but incomplete routes toward greener pharmaceutical production. It also shows that excipients, packaging, and drug delivery systems remain under-theorised in sustainability debates despite their cumulative contribution to material intensity, environmental persistence, and disposal complexity. Five tables present green manufacturing technologies, excipient burden data, circular design principles, environmental risks, and implementation barriers. The central conclusion is that sustainable pharmaceutical technology requires a systems-level transition rather than a collection of isolated green substitutions. Genuine sustainability will depend on integrating green manufacturing with excipient stewardship, circular product design, environmental risk reduction, regulatory adaptation, and cross-sector accountability. The field must therefore move from sustainability as a supplementary efficiency concern toward sustainability as a core design principle of pharmaceutical innovation.