Drug Development

A well-devised QPP, which has been agreed on and signed by both parties, saves time and makes it easier to complete activities such as design, installations and tests.

Lipid-based drug delivery systems - such as liposomes, micro-and nanoemulsions, self-emulsified drug delivery systems, and solid lipid micro-and nanoparticles - are becoming more popular because lipid materials are easily characterized, contain a high range of well-defined/tolerated surfactant molecules and can be developed for several administration routes.

Never has greater pressure been applied to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Shelf space competition for branded drugs has reached aggressive proportions and now even prescription drugs vie for pricing and delivery. Against this is a backdrop of ever-increasing downward price pressures, and a spectrum of progressively more stringent legislative and quality requirements. Finally, regional markets now demand different tamper evidence technology, anticounterfeiting measures and safeguards against interference by biological terrorists. Much of which points to the need for innovation in packaging - not just in terms of pack styles and sizes, but also cost.

Company and People Notes: ISP to raise prices, Patheon appoints CEO, more.

Company and People Notes: Cambridge Major Labs acquires ChemShop; Helix BioPharma restructures senior positions, more.

Company and People Notes: BASF raises prices on excipients; Verus Pharmaceuticals appoints president and CEO; more.

A company has raised ?700000 to assist in the development of treatments for antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Pfizer's Lipitor patent revoked in Germany, promotions at Charles River Labs, more.

King Pharmaceuticals, and Acura Pharmaceuticals have entered into a license, development and commercialization agreement for the United States, Canada, and Mexico, encompassing a potentially wide range of opioid analgesic products utilizing Acura?s patented Aversion (abuse-deterrent) Technology platform.

Editors' Picks of Pharmaceutical Science & Technology Innovations

Market demand for cytotoxic drugs is leading CMOs to expand their API manufacturing and formulation services.

Natural gums and mucilage have been widely explored as pharmaceutical excipients. The goal of this study was to extract mucilage from the leaves of Aloe barbadensis Miller and to study its functionality as an excipient in pharmaceutical sustained-release tablet formulations.

The EIP process addresses the problems encountered with numerous questionnaires when qualifying excipient manufacturers.

The crystalline structure of pharmaceutical solids can sometimes be altered during processing. X-ray powder diffraction and near infrared spectroscopy can be used to determine the amorphous and crystalline content of a model substance. The two techniques' precision, accuracy, detection limit and the speed of analysis are compared.

Company Notes: Gibraltar expands facilities; Allozyne appoints new president and CEO, more.

The senior director of Oracle's Life Sciences Business Unit tackles some of the technical issues regarding regulatory standardization, software integration, and the trend toward visualization, among other things.

Company and People Notes: ImClone, BMS, and Merck form agreement; CRI Worldwide names new CEO, more.

Company and People Notes: Orexo acquires Biolipox, Avalon cofounder resigns, more...

An exclusive licence agreement has been signed to develop a new oral treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a condition that affects approximately 165 million people.

CPhI Worldwide, the large trade show of suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), intermediates, and excipients, took on a decidedly international presence.

Company and People Notes: Novartis and MIT to study continuous processing, GSK appoints Andrew Witty as CEO, more.

The European Fine Chemicals Group (EFCG) issued a position paper on excipients used in pharmaceutical manufacturing at CPhI Worldwide last week.

Company and People Notes: Thermo Fisher Scientific buys Priority Solutions International, Wyeth elects new president and CEO, more.

As China emerges as a significant supplier of pharmaceutical ingredients, it must assure other countries of the safety of its excipients.

A roundup of news from exhibitors at CPhI Worldwide.

Transdermal delivery takes up once-forbidden compounds, reviving markets and creating formulation opportunities.

Amidst debate, the European Pharmacopoeia Commission is working to include physical or "functionality-related characteristics" of exipient materials in its monographs.

To monitor and control processes or products, analytical methodology must be fit for purpose. An approach to apply quality by design principles to the design and evaluation of analytical methods has therefore been developed to meet these needs. This article features a downloadable template on which to conduct a failure mode effect analysis (FMEA).

Through consideration of the ionic equilibria of acids and bases, one may readily calculate the formation constant of a salt species solely on the basis of knowledge of the pKA value of the acid and the pKB value of the base.

Orally disintegrating tablets (ODTs) continue to attract attention as an alternative to conventional oral dosage forms.