EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Yourway: Supporting COVID-19 Studies & Vaccine Distribution
Leandro Moreira, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Yourway, discusses what role the company will play in globally transporting COVID-19 vaccine(s), how Yourway is gearing up for this project, and the challenges of this extraordinary task.
PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY - Morphomer(TM) & SupraAntigen(TM) Platforms: Targeting Misfolded Proteins in Neurodegenerative Disorders
Andrea Pfeifer, PhD, details the efforts to develop the therapeutic and diagnostic tools necessary to enable precision medicine approaches targeting the right protein, at the right time, in the right patient.
FORMULATION FORUM - Parenteral Sustained Delivery of ASD-005 Liposomal Formulation: A Case Study in Applications of Lipid-Based Nanoparticle Carriers
Jim Huang, PhD, presents an investigation aimed at studying the administration of a liposomal form of a third-generation β-blocker, ASD-005, by injectable route of administration to efficiently manage emergency hypertension and congestive heart failure.
ASSAY DEVELOPMENT - Case Study: How Custom Assay Development Helped Spur Precision Medicine Research in Multiple Myeloma
Steven Gross, MS, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the CMMC assay development process (from 2010 through today) to show how pharmaceutical companies can effectively partner with a laboratory to design customized assays that complement their drug discovery and development programs.
PEGYLATION - PEGylation - Three Decades of Product Approvals & Technology Development
Esay Okutgen, PhD, Alper Orhan, MSc, and Josef Bossart, PhD, believe with the 30-year anniversary of the first product approval using PEG (polyethylene oxide polymer) conjugation, it seems an appropriate occasion to review the evolution of the technology (PEGylation) and subsequent product approvals.
CDMO CASE STUDY - AJILITY: Streamlining Drug Product Manufacturing
Dustin Campbell says the AJILITY platform takes the burden off clients and allows his company to drive, manage, and support their drug product manufacturing, maximizing speed and success, while prioritizing these programs are driven to completion.
DRUG DELIVERY - Recognizing the Patient Potential for Transdermal Drug Delivery
Sally Waterman, PhD, and Vasiliki Nikolaou, PhD, explain how transdermal drug delivery patches have the potential to significantly improve not only the outcome of treatments, but also the quality of life for those patients using them.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Immunic Therapeutics: Developing Next-Generation Oral Drugs in Chronic Inflammatory, Autoimmune & Infectious Diseases
Daniel Vitt, PhD, Immunic’s Chief Executive Officer and President, discusses his company’s pipeline of selective, small molecule therapies aimed at treating chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, and its recent progress.
DEVICE DEVELOPMENT - Designing Devices for Inhaled Drugs
Andreas Meliniotis explains how there is plenty of opportunity for the development of new, improved devices to ensure inhaled drugs can be accessible for a wide range of patients and can treat various diseases and conditions effectively.
OVER-ENCAPSULATION CAPSULES - Double-Blind, Zero Bias: Over-Encapsulation — The Right Tool for Blinding Studies?
Julien Lamps believes that while many blinding options are available to drug sponsors and external clinical research partners, over-encapsulation remains a popular choice for its dosing simplicity, trial efficacy, patient accessibility, and cost-effectiveness.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Enteris BioPharma: Pioneers in Oral Formulation Development
Dr. Rajiv Khosla, CEO of Enteris BioPharma, discusses how his company’s innovative oral formulation technology is helping the pharmaceutical industry overcome the hurdle of low bioavailability to reshape treatment categories and expand market opportunities with minimal financial and regulatory risks.
OSD FORMULATIONS - Dissolving Bioavailability & Solubility Challenges in Formulation & Development
Vinod Patil, PhD, says many of the innovative and novel formulations introduced throughout the past decade have had to cope with poorly water-soluble APIs. Considering the pace of development, overcoming solubility issues will remain problematic, and this is especially true for important new classes of pharmaceuticals entering the market.
CUSTOM DEVICE SOLUTIONS - Device Design Will Act as Competitive Distinguisher in a Post-Patent Expiry Biosimilar Market
George I’ons dissects the different factors that will determine biosimilars’ adoption and pace of advancement against their original counterparts, namely clinical confidence in the biosimilar and patient confidence in the drug delivery device.
IMMUNOGENICITY TESTING - Regulatory Updates for Immunogenicity Assessment of Therapeutic Proteins
Leon Shi, PhD, Lan Li, MS, and Jing Shi, PhD, provide a high-level analysis of the significant changes to the guidance compared to the immunogenicity draft guidance released in 2016, and the implications for drug development programs.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Injection Devices: Will COVID-19 Deliver Growth to the Market?
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin interviews several leading companies and highlights trends in autoinjectors, pen injectors, wearable devices and connectivity, and prefilled syringes.
FORMULATION FORUM - Formulation Development Strategy for Early Phase Human Studies
Jim Huang, PhD, says successful translation of discovery compounds into first-in-human and first-in-patient is one of the key challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry, and to achieve this, a rational formulation development strategy will be critical to avoid costly development failures, while speeding up the development timeline in a cost-effective manner.
DRUG DEVELOPMENT - Bringing New Drugs to Patients Faster by Integrating Traditionally Separate Pharma Development Functions
Nutan Gangrade, PhD, says reducing R&D project timelines saves on overhead in development while increasing the likelihood of primacy in the marketplace (which engenders significantly more sales) and describes new approaches drug developers are taking to streamline drug development.
GENE-EDITING TECHNOLOGY - The Importance of Assessing Off-Target Effects of CRISPR Gene Editing
Mark Behlke, MD, PhD, says gene editing raises legitimate questions and fears about possible risks and misuse, and given the relative technical ease and low cost of CRISPR gene editing, this is likely to find widespread use in both medicine and agriculture.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - AMO Pharma: Identifying & Developing Cancer Pathway Therapeutic Candidates for Use in New Neurological Indications
Michael Snape, PhD, AMO Pharma’s Chief Scientific Officer, discusses the company’s research focus and efforts to understand and target the mechanism of action of CNS disorders associated with developmental delay with the potential to target neurogenetic disorders at their root cause.
DEVICE DEVELOPMENT - Mapping the Regulatory Strategy to Better Navigate Electronic Drug Delivery Device Development for Patient Safety & Security
Ahmed Mallek, Hadrien Gremillet, and Audrey Chandra say that along with technology advancement in the medical industry, the behaviors and needs of different stakeholders also evolve, resulting in a clear interest in electronic drug delivery devices for a variety of reasons.
