Featured Articles
FORMULATION FORUM - Understanding of Amorphous Solid Dispersions & Their Downstream Development
Jim Huang, PhD, discusses how understanding the properties of ASDs and their relationship to downstream product scale up, stability, and in-vivo performance is critical to successfully utilize them for drug delivery of insoluble drugs in early development and commercialization in a timely and cost-effective manner.
INHALATION DELIVERY - Inhaled Drug Development: Optimizing Delivery
Sandy Munro, PhD, Nikki Willis, and Geraldine Venthoye, PhD, believe selecting the delivery device/platform on the basis of patient needs, nature of disease, and opportunities for accelerating the proof-of-concept or early clinical stages by using fast-to-clinic approaches can help to accelerate the project through later-stage development by combining the approach with seamless scalability, designing in manufacturability, and an appropriate manufacturing strategy.
BIOSIMILAR DEVELOPMENT - Guidance on Biosimilar Interchangeability: The Debate Over Drug Delivery Devices
Darren Mansell says as early experience in following this guidance has recently matured, some issues have arisen that may impede best available outcomes for patients, one of which is the question of whether “interchangeability” guidance may stifle innovation (and therefore improved patient experience) in drug delivery devices.
OPEN INNOVATION PLATFORM - Incentivizing Drug Delivery Research Using an Open Sharing Platform
Keith R. Horspool, PhD, Shirlynn Chen, PhD, and Markus Koester, PhD, discuss an open innovation platform to stimulate scientific understanding, and development of potential new technologies, for delivery of compounds with challenging solubility by offering a set of more contemporary poorly soluble drugs free-of-charge for independent research activities.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY - ESCP, Estimating Product Performance Part 2 – Choosing a Seesaw
Josef Bossart, PhD, introduces, in a series of short articles, a qualitative model to help understand and visualize the potential of a product with prescribers, patients, and payors. This simple model can help weed out product ideas that may at first glance seem attractive but offer little potential in the real world.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Celanese: Better Therapeutic Outcomes From Better Drug Delivery
Laura Brand, Vice President of Celanese’s Medical & Pharmaceutical Business, discusses her company’s drug delivery platform and the value it brings to the industry.
NUCLEAR β-CATENIN INHIBITOR - TBL1 - A Novel Target for Safe & Effective Blockade of the Nuclear β-catenin Signaling Pathway
Ruolan Han, PhD, explains how targeting TBL1/TBLR1 enables specific silencing of oncogenic Wnt target gene expression without affecting other necessary cellular functions that are disrupted when targeting higher up the Wnt pathway.
CLINICAL TRIALS - Considering Recurrent Events in Clinical Trials Statistical Analysis
Jennifer Rogers discusses how non-fatal recurring events, such as asthma attacks, epileptic seizures, and hospitalization for heart disease, have a certain manner in which they should be handled in clinical trials.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - SDP Oncology: Uncovering New Biology
David J. Bearss, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Global Head of Research at SDP Oncology, discusses his company’s unique structure that has supported its robust research in the tumor immune microenvironment as well as its investigational assets being studied in this space.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Improving Bioavailability & Solubility: Each Molecule Is Unique
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin speaks with several innovative companies to discuss novel approaches to improving bioavailability and solubility that have one commonality: they treat each molecule as an individual.
FORMULATION FORUM - Considerations in Development & Manufacturing of Complex Injectables for Early Phase Studies
Jim Huang, PhD, explains how a niche CDMO, which has specialized technologies in complex injectable development and adopts GMP practice with a “laboratory setting,” will have greater flexibility regarding changes, timing, and cost for successful manufacture of complex injectables in early phase development of therapeutic drugs.
GLOBAL REPORT - 2020 Global Drug Delivery & Formulation Report: Part 1, a Global Review
In part 1 of this 4-part series, PharmaCircle, in collaboration with Drug Development & Delivery, focuses on a global review of 2020 product approvals.
CELL & GENE THERAPY - End-to-End Cell & Gene Therapy – From Development to Commercialization – Buy or Build?
Aldo Romano and Emily Moran, MBA, discuss how the life science industry must bring technology solutions to the table while at the same time securing the capacity to develop and manufacture groundbreaking cures so patients and society can tap the benefits of cell and gene therapies.
DRUG DEVELOPMENT - Understanding & Targeting the Mechanism of Action of Developmental Disorders
Michael Snape, PhD, says when identifying promising therapeutic targets for any disease or condition, including developmental disorders such as Fragile X syndrome, PMS, CDM1, and Rett syndrome, it is critical researchers work to understand the mechanism of disease and disease pathways as well as the unmet need and patient experience.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Pharmaceutics International, Inc: Getting Back to its Roots
Sridhar Krishnan, Pii’s Senior Vice President, Operations and Strategic Initiatives, discusses how manufacturing is not solely where Pii wanted to be, so the company made a concerted effort to get back to its CDMO roots.
IMMUNE ACTIVATORS - Enhancing Cell Adhesion to Safely Improve Effectiveness of Vaccines & Cancer Immunotherapies
Siddhartha De, PhD, and Peter Vanderslice, PhD, present their research on the use of proprietary, orally available compounds that can activate the immune system to enhance the effectiveness of vaccines as well as immuno-oncology therapies for cancer, especially in patient populations that are most vulnerable to disease.
MICROFLUIDIC ENCAPSULATION TECHNOLOGY - Achieving Reliable siRNA Drug Delivery for Inflammatory Diseases & Tumor Targeting by Nanoencapsulation
Olivia Merkel, PhD, and Christoph Zimmermann, PhD student, discuss the benefits of microfluidic encapsulation technology for gene silencing applications in cancer immunology and inflammatory diseases, where siRNA can potentially be used to downregulate genes associated with these pathologies.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Pace Analytical® Life Sciences: Delivering Science Better; Advancing Novel Therapies Through the Clinic to Commercialization
Frank Tagliaferri, PhD, Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development at PLS, discusses his experiences with the company and its recent growth.
ORAL MUCOSAL IMMUNOTHERAPY - Oral Mucosal Delivery of Allergenic Proteins for Inducing Tolerance in Food Allergic Individuals
William R. Reisacher, MD, highlights some of the differences between food allergy immunotherapy via the oral mucosal route versus exposure through the stomach and intestines.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY - ESCP, Estimating Product Performance Part 1 - Playground Physics
Josef Bossart, PhD, introduces, in a series of short articles, a qualitative model to help understand and visualize the potential of a product with prescribers, patients, and payors. This simple model can help weed out product ideas that may at first glance seem attractive but offer little potential in the real world.
