EXECUTVE INTERVIEW - Aptar: Advancing Patient-Centric Drug Delivery & Digital Health Solutions

The pharmaceutical and digital health landscapes are constantly shifting, driven by technological advancements, regulatory changes, and evolving patient and consumer demands. Aptar, a global leader in drug and consumer product dosing, dispensing, and protection technologies, stands at the forefront of the changing landscapes by continuously innovating around nasal drug delivery, components for injectables, patient experience, sustainability, and more. Aptar’s digital health solutions place patients at the center of the equation and give pharma companies and healthcare teams solutions to enhance patient experiences with the goal to improve healthcare outcomes. This patient-centric philosophy is pivotal to Aptar’s strategy.

Drug Development & Delivery interviewed Gael Touya, President of Aptar Pharma, and Sai Shankar, President, M&A, Strategy, BD, Marketing, Drug Services, Aptar Pharma, to discuss the burgeoning potential in the future of pharma and digital health, how the company is a strategic partner to key players in these spaces, and the investments Aptar is making to support the growing demand.

Q: Where do you see the biggest opportunity within the pharma industry? Where is Aptar investing?

Gael: The pharmaceutical ecosystem is constantly evolving. Today, we lead in drug delivery solutions for certain delivery routes, including nasal, pulmonary, ophthalmic, and dermal. Right now, we see injectables, nasal drug delivery, and digital therapeutics, which Sai will talk more about, as some of the largest market opportunities within the pharmaceutical industry, and we are actively investing to ensure we are at the forefront of shaping the future of these spaces.

For 2023, the pharma industry’s total addressable market was over $1.4 trillion(1), and we estimate that injectables made up about 45% of that.(1) When looking at our own business, injectables accounted for 18% of all pharma sales in 2023. It is likely this market will only continue to grow over the next few years, especially considering the continued demand for biologic drugs. Our $180 million, multisite, international expansion project for injectables is intended to significantly boost capacity, enabling us to industrialize our higher value product offerings.

We also see nasal drug delivery solutions as a driving force in the Pharma industry, with opportunities for more needle-free drug delivery solutions. For example, the opioid overdose treatment NARCAN® uses our proprietary Unidose nasal system. In this space, Aptar is uniquely positioned to support customers on everything from formulation development all the way through to clinical trials and commercial product manufacturing. To meet increased customer demand, we are expanding the manufacturing capacity of our Unidose nasal drug delivery system at our Congers, NY, facility.

Allergic rhinitis was one of the fastest growing categories for us in 2023, and we are a leader in the delivery of nasal allergy medications, with a proven track-record of getting products to market around the world. Our delivery solutions are on over 300 market references.

Q: What are the biggest regulatory hurdles your customers face with drug development, and how does Aptar Pharma support its customers through the process?

Gael: From clinical trials, regulatory filings, robust R&D documentation, intellectual property protection, and more, it is no secret the regulatory process surrounding drug development is strict and time-consuming. While these guidelines are in place for good reason, it makes navigating the ever-changing regulatory landscape complex. Even more so for emerging companies that might not have the data, experience, or technical capabilities to successfully meet regulatory compliance.

Working on a product with a new API, from early stage development through market launch, can be a 10-year-plus process. Success in our business requires strong regulatory expertise, and we have established ourselves as a trusted partner in this ecosystem. We have more than 3 decades of experience with the different regulatory bodies, and we partner with our customers early in the drug development program. We also have strong scientific expertise in specialized drug delivery systems and help our customers to de-risk and accelerate the drug development programs.

Through our pharma services businesses, we support our customers’ research and development needs, from concept to initial design, device, and formulation development, through the clinical trial phase and regulatory filings, and on to market launch and post-launch activities. We have also invested in expanding our expertise in patient on-boarding for adherence improvement. This is apparent in our service companies like Noble, an industry leader in medical device training solutions, bringing expertise in Human Factors engineering, market insights, and device design and training for self-administration of drug therapies, as well as Metaphase, which allows us to provide insights into patient behaviors. We provide valuable input to our customers to bring to market the best drug delivery solutions in terms of safety and compliance.

Our commitment to quality and services allows us to build our pipeline, positioning us as a partner throughout the drug development process.

Q: Sustainability is a growing focus for the pharma industry, yet many players are still facing barriers. What does the future of sustainability in pharma look like?

Gael: Sustainability is core to our Beauty and Closures consumer facing businesses, and our Pharma business is building upon key learnings and successes to become an early leader in this space. Understandably, ensuring sustainable practices, packaging, products, etc within pharma can be difficult as there’s a delicate balance between the needs of the environment and the quality and safety requirements of the delivery systems. The timeline to achieve approval on pharma products and bring them to market is much longer than other industries and therefore the ability to change materials is not a quick process.

But with major drivers for the push to sustainability, including consumer demand for more sustainable products and regulations that call for more circular business approaches, we are dedicated to helping our customers overcome these barriers. As we help contribute to a more sustainable future for the pharma industry, we expect to see a few priorities arise as more companies transition to circular economic models.

For these goals to come to fruition, circularity will involve expanding the use of alternative resin materials and designing recyclability into new devices. For example, products made from pure polyolefin materials, free from recycling disruptors and resins from renewable feedstock or chemically recycled ones that are made with the same properties as conventional resins. Our Futurity™ solutions platform, which includes a metal free nasal spray pump, is specifically designed for improved recyclability and to meet the needs of our customers and their consumers.

Q: The digital health space is booming. What do you believe is the biggest driver of this growth?

Sai: The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance of remote patient management in the context of difficult access to care. It accelerated some of the first adoptions of remote patient management technologies and remote consultations with healthcare professionals. It also accelerated conversations around reimbursement of these new care delivery pathways.

In addition to meeting market demands, digital health can bolster healthcare systems in a variety of ways, including improving care delivery and outcomes, empowering patient compliance, reducing the burden on care workers, and diminishing costs. In most healthcare systems, providers are paid based on the number of performed activities, not on the delivered quality over time. Data is needed to measure the value of a medical act and shift toward what is called Value-Based Healthcare. Collecting these data points (disease evolution, patient quality of life, etc) is possible due to digital health.

Today, we see the digital health market is starting to consolidate. In the past few years, there have been hundreds of small digital health players. Today, we are seeing the industry move toward more industrial champions, and Aptar is one of them.

Q: What potential do artificial intelligence and machine learning have in transforming digital health, specifically around patient experiences?

Sai: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) hold tremendous potential to transform digital health, particularly in enhancing patient experiences through, for example, personalized care. AI can potentially analyze vast amounts of data from various sources (electronic health records/EHRs, genetic information, lifestyle factors, etc) to help generate tailored treatment paths to patients. ML algorithms can potentially predict health events, such as disease outbreaks or the likelihood of hospital readmission, allowing healthcare providers to offer proactive, preventative care and better manage chronic conditions.

At Aptar, we are focusing on accelerating the diagnosis timeline through image analysis. We are currently integrating AI algorithms to analyze skin images, voice biomarkers, and eye fundus images, which may lead to a faster and more accurate diagnosis, particularly in dermatological and other conditions. We also invest in disease prediction and identification. In leveraging ML models, we can identify patterns in data that may indicate the onset of a disease, often before traditional symptoms present themselves. Finally, we use Large Language Models and generative AI to optimize the end-user experience with our products, making navigation easier and providing new ways to interact, find content, and provide data inputs into our solutions.

Q: Aptar has recently announced several new collaborations, like with Biogen and Healint, for example. What makes Aptar so attractive as a partner in both Pharma and Digital Health?

Sai: Aptar’s position is very attractive for the market. We are experienced digital health leaders with established strategic relationships with pharmaceutical companies. With Aptar’s global capabilities, we can also build products and services at scale and help mitigate the risk involved with product roll outs for our pharmaceutical partners.

Unique to the market, we also blend hardware and software engineering technologies, differentiating Aptar Digital Health with its strong expertise on topics such as self-administration, adherence monitoring, or digital patient support programs for injectable drugs. Our ability to roll these capabilities out across several geographies and conditions is an invaluable asset in a consolidating digital health market.

Reference

1. IQVIA; total worldwide drug sales value