Drug Delivery
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.
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.
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.
CNS DELIVERY - Bypassing the BBB: Drug Delivery From the Olfactory Mucosa to the CNS
T.R. Shantha, MD, PhD, FACA, explores and explains how therapeutic and non- therapeutic agents can reach the brain, bypassing through the formidable BBB based on the unique microanatomic and physiologic characteristics of the nasal olfactory mucosal route and its CNS connections that allow transportation directly into the CNS.
COMBINATION PRODUCTS - 6 Guidelines to Follow When Developing Combination Products
Winston Brown explains how companies can reduce the risk and impact that regulatory uncertainty can play by, in advance of pursuing development, understanding the regulatory landscape and then developing a regulatory compliance strategy that is appropriate and suitable for the combination product as a system.
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.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Insulet Corporation: Improving Adherence Through Wearable, Patient-Centric Drug Delivery
Michael Graffeo, Vice President of Business Development, Insulet Delivery Systems Group, discusses the importance of optimizing patient adherence to ensure improved clinical outcomes.
PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY - The 3DNA® Platform for Targeted Drug Delivery
Robert C. Getts, PhD, and Jessica Bowers review how the 3DNA platform is composed entirely of noncoding DNA assembled through the sequential hybridization of single strands of DNA into a network of double-stranded nucleic acid having a controlled architecture, and multiple attachment sites for drug and targeting molecules.
COMBINATION PRODUCTS - Device Development for Pharmaceutical & Biologic Combination Products
Bill Welch says when developing a combination product, there are many things to be considered – relationships between device development and the pharmaceutical or biologic, early establishment of regulatory and clinical strategies, understanding user needs, determining product requirements, as well as device manufacturing variation.
ADVANCED DELIVERY DEVICES - Sophisticated Connected Wearables: Boosting Biologics’ Compliance, Value & Patient Satisfaction
Michael D. Hooven, MSME, says the new, most advanced wearable large-volume injectors available now for clinical trials and commercial application are designed to address the challenges of formulating biologics, delivery complexity, patient compliance, and cost.
DEVICE STUDY - The Intuitiveness, Ergonomics & Usability of the Credence Companion® Safety Syringe: A Formative Study
John A. Merhige, MEM, and Lisa Caparra, RN, present an informative human factors study to evaluate and assess the intuitiveness, ergonomics, and usability of the Credence Companion® Staked Safety Syringe.
TRAINING DEVICES - Best Practices & Considerations in Developing Effective Training Devices for Injectable Healthcare Markets
Joe Reynolds says training devices are often used to create consistent onboarding experiences for patients through the use of novel technologies and mechanisms that fully simulate the mechanical aspects of the injection experience. And while these devices appear to be fairly simple at first glance, numerous design and engineering challenges must be addressed.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Injectable Drug Delivery: Key Trends Define Device Design Now & in the Future
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin spoke with some of the world’s leading device developers about their current injection technologies and how their devices are addressing the current trends and opportunities in the industry.
SOFTGEL FORMULATIONS - Lipid-Based Drug Delivery System to Bring Poorly Soluble Drugs to Market
Ronak Savla, PhD, PharmD, and Jeffrey E. Browne, PhD, indicate formulation screening, development, scale-up, and commercial manufacture of LBDDSs require considerable expertise, and choosing an outsourcing partner with experience and a proven track record is critical.
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.
