Drug Delivery
SPECIAL FEATURE - Wanted: New Excipients to Meet the Demands of a Challenging Industry
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin recently spoke with some of the leading excipient innovators to find out what types of excipients they are developing, the advantages they offer to formulations, and where they see the industry focusing throughout the next few years.
SPRAY-DRIED DISPERSIONS - Particle Engineering of Spray Dried Dispersions: Considerations for Downstream Processing
Aaron Goodwin, PhD, Alyssa Ekdahl, and Deanna Mudie, PhD, demonstrate the tunability of SDD particle properties and the resulting impact on the powder flow and mechanical properties for tablet manufacturability of a given SDD formulation.
CONTRACT MANUFACTURING - Delivering Market Success & ROI to Pharmaceutical Partners
Mike Schaefers, PhD, and Mike Treadaway say more than ever, contract manufacturing must deliver continuous innovation and flexibility to accommodate the delivery of a wide range of drugs throughout each therapy’s lifecycle.
NEEDLE-FREE INJECTION - Portal PRIME: A Digitally Controlled, Cloud-Integrated Jet Injection System
Patrick Anquetil, PhD, and Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, PhD, report on Portal PRIME, a needle-free and digitally controlled jet injection device that is breaking new ground for injectable drug delivery.
MDI CHARACTERIZATION - Closing the Gap Between In Vitro Test Data & the In-Use Performance for Metered Dose Inhalers
David A. Lewis, PhD, presents experimental data that shows how certain modifications to the Pharmacopoeial test methods used for MDIs may result in data that is more indicative of real-life performance, providing insight that can be used to enhance drug delivery characteristics.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Prefilled Syringes & Parenteral Manufacturing: A Rise in Biologics & Improved Technology Give Pharma Reasons to Consider Parenteral Delivery
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin speaks with some of the leading companies in this market to find out about key trends, packaging advancements, safety improvements, and technology developments.
CONTROLLED RELEASE - Leveraging Precision Particle Fabrication® Technology to Create Patient-Friendly Dosage Forms
Cory Berkland, PhD, and Nathan Dormer, PhD, review how controlled-release powders offer a flexible and efficient approach to addressing a multitude of patient populations, while also improving compliance.
MARKET BRIEF - Preferences for Targeted Therapies & Patient-Centric Approaches Drive Transformations in Oncology Drug Delivery Market
Frost & Sullivan Analyst Piyush Bansal says although chemotherapy has been successfully used for inhibiting cell growth throughout the past few decades, the side effects of chemotherapy have forced researchers to look for some alternative drugs (and how to effectively deliver them) for all types of cancer.
NON-CANNABIS THERAPY - Cannabinoid Therapy Without Using Cannabis: Direct Effects™ Topical β-Caryophyllene
Ronald Aung-Din, MD, in view of many documented medical benefits of cannabinoids, but with widely persisting regulations, misinformation, and stigma associated with cannabis, searches for a non-cannabis-derived source of cannabinoid therapy, such as found in β-Caryophyllene.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Oasmia Pharmaceutical: Commercializing Technologies While Pursuing the US Market
Julian Aleksov, Executive Chairman of Oasmia Pharmaceutical, discusses his company’s efforts to enter the US market, its strategy to increase commercial adoption, and why it believes its underlying drug delivery system technology is significant not only within the oncology sector, but the entire pharmaceutical industry.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Formulation Development & Manufacturing - CDMOs Offer Speed, Advanced Technologies, & the Ability to Handle More Potent APIs
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin speaks with some of the industry’s leading CDMOs to highlight their capabilities in the areas of speed, quality, technology, and handling of complex APIs.
CELLULAR MICROENCAPSULATION - Cell Encapsulation for Drug Delivery & Disease Treatment
Gerald W. Crabtree, PhD, indicates drug or treatment delivery that employs microencapsulation, one of many promising developments in the field of regenerative medicine, offers not only treatments but also potential cures for a wide variety of maladies.
ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE - MGB: The Minor Groove Binder
Dawn A. Firmin, MSc, PhD, explains how MGB has dedicated its focus to the development of a new class of small molecules, with specific antibacterial activity against susceptible and resistant bacteria.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Vetter: Establishing a Successful Clinical Fill & Finish Manufacturing Site for Biologics
Dr. Susanne Resatz, President of Vetter Development Services USA, Inc., discusses the many benefits to small biotech companies in utilizing the services of a full-service CDMO, and what advanced services the Chicago-based facility offers its growing customer base.
COMBINATION CORNER - Keys to Avoiding Common Pitfalls in the Development of Product Requirements for Drug Combination Products
Jerzy Wojcik says it is more important than ever to bring the right team together early in a project to capture product requirements correctly. The cost of missing needs or requirements goes up exponentially as development proceeds, and many of these requirements can be identified early in the project if the right individuals are at the table.
AAV VECTOR MANUFACTURING - Challenges & Opportunities in the Manufacturing of AAV Vectors Used in the Delivery of Gene Therapy Treatments
Daniel C. Smith, PhD, indicates there remains a clear need for improved process productivities, and the need to develop manufacturing processes that can be applied to a wide number of AAV-based viral vector therapeutic candidates.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Bioavailability & Solubility: New Approaches to Enhance Drug Performance
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin highlights many of the latest techniques to enhance bioavailability and solubility, how to determine the right technique for your compound, and how some companies are realizing faster time to market as a result.
ORALLY DISINTEGRATING TABLETS - Patient-Centric Dose Design, Developments in Orally Disintegrating Tablets
Leon Grother, MS, and Mathias Bayru, MS, MBA, indicate recent developments in ODT technology have widened the range of actives that can be formulated and product types that are possible. In particular, the promise of formulating biologics and ODT vaccines is hugely exciting.
ADVANCED DELIVERY DEVICES - Disruptive Delivery Technology Partnerships Are Key to Pharmaceutical Life Cycle Management
Michael D. Hooven, MSME, believes in the challenge to deliver innovative therapies that address unmet patient needs while delivering profitable growth, and the industry is responding by embracing disruptive technology that can concurrently help on both fronts and also speed time to market for pharmaceutical products and services.
BIODEGRADABLE FIBERS - Enabling Controlled Pharmaceutical & Biologic Delivery for Next-Generation Medical Applications
Kevin Nelson, PhD, discusses how wet-extruded fiber eliminates the traditional limitations of pharmaceuticals and biologics that may be incorporated into implantable medical devices with melt extrusion or electrospun fibers, microspheres, or nanoparticles.
What are Drug Delivery Systems?
Drug delivery systems are engineered technologies for the targeted delivery and/or controlled release of therapeutic agents. The practice of drug delivery has changed significantly in the past few decades and even greater changes are anticipated in the near future. Drug delivery includes but is not limited to oral delivery, gene/cell delivery, topical/transdermal delivery, inhalation deliver, parenteral delivery, respiratory delivery, capsules, particle design technology, buccal delivery, etc.
The Evolution of Drug Delivery Systems
Drug delivery systems have greatly evolved over the past 6 decades. In the past 12 years specifically, there have been huge advancements in drug delivery technology. For instance, advanced medication delivery systems, such as transdermal patches, are able to deliver a drug more selectively to a specific site, which frequently leads to easier, more accurate, and less dosing overall. Devices such as these can also lead to a drug absorption that is more consistent with the site and mechanism of action. There are other drug delivery systems used in both medical and homecare settings that were developed because of various patient needs and researchers continue to develop new methods.
Drug Delivery System Market Size
The pharmaceutical drug delivery market size is studied on the basis of route of administration, application, and region to provide a detailed assessment of the market. On the basis of route of administration, it is segmented into oral delivery, pulmonary delivery, injectable delivery, nasal delivery, ocular delivery, topical delivery, and others.
The estimated global market size of drug delivery products was $1.4 trillion in 2020. Unfortunately, 40% of marketed drugs and 90% of pipeline drugs (mostly small molecules) are poorly soluble in water, which makes parenteral, topical, and oral delivery difficult or impossible. In relation, poor solubility often leads to low drug efficacy. Add in the fact that many other hurdles exist in the form of drug loading, stability, controlled release, toxicity, and absorption – it’s not hard to understand the difficulties in bringing new drug products to market. Additionally, biopharmaceuticals (proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, etc) and combination drug products possess many of these same problematic obstacles that affect efficacy. These challenges, coupled with the complexity and diversity of new pharmaceuticals, have fueled the development of a novel drug delivery platforms that overcome a great many bioavailability and delivery obstacles. By leveraging these platforms, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies can improve dosing accuracy, efficacy, and reproducibility in their drug discovery and drug delivery research.
Drug Delivery System Demand
The demand for pharmaceutical products worldwide is only going to increase in the coming years, as old and emerging diseases continue to threaten the well-being of people globally. Drug discovery efforts are expected to intensify, generating a large variety of active compounds with vastly different structures and properties. However, it is well known that despite tremendous output of the drug discovery process, the success rate of a candidate compound becoming an approved drug product is extremely low. The majority of candidate compounds are discarded due to various hurdles in formulation and preclinical testing (such as issues with solubility, stability, manufacturing, storage, and bioavailability) before even entering into clinical studies. Therefore, advances in formulation and drug delivery, especially the development of new and versatile biomaterial platforms as effective excipients, may salvage many “difficult,” otherwise triaged, drug compounds, and significantly enhance their chance of becoming viable products. Furthermore, breakthroughs in biomaterial platform technologies will also facilitate life cycle management of existing APIs through reformulation, repurposing of existing APIs for new indications, and development of combination products consisting of multiple APIs.
