TruTag Technologies Wins Technology Innovation Award for Taggants

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PTSM: Pharmaceutical Technology Sourcing and Management

PTSM: Pharmaceutical Technology Sourcing and Management-08-02-2017, Volume 12, Issue 8

TruTags, the company’s silicon dioxide microtags, won Frost & Sullivan's 2017 North American Award for Technology Innovation.

TruTag Technologies, Inc. has won the 2017 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation for TruTags, its silicon dioxide particle-based microtags, which are designed to generate an optical signature that can be used to authenticate, identify, and track products along the supply chain. The microtags can be used in various industries, including healthcare, to reduce the risk of counterfeiting, product diversion, quality incidents, and product

TruTag etches silicon dioxide particles in batches to create unique combinations of nanopores of customizable shape and depth for each customer and industry. The nano-pores reflect light at discrete, selected wavelengths that are authenticated by the company's portable readers; therefore, each microtag possesses an optical signature that is unique, identifiable, and extremely secure.

"The microtags' spectral codes provide information at the product level as well as the country, batch, and distributor levels," said Frost & Sullivan's Senior Research Analyst Aniruddha Roy. This can help customers gather information on dosage, manufacturing site, authorized distribution channel, lot number, drug package insert, and related safety data

Regulators including FDA have designated silicon dioxide “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) for human consumption, which allows the material to be used directly in pharmaceuticals. Current research is also exploring use of silicon dioxide particles in controlled release of drugs. Silicon dioxide is also gaining traction in the chemicals industry because the particles can withstand temperatures of nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius, allowing them to be mixed into a coating or polymer/plastic.

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TruTag's technology is said to be scalable and the company has recently increased capacity by more than fifty fold at its manufacturing plant. This production facility, which manufactures microtags for the pharmaceutical and food industries, meets current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) requirements,  and the TruTag says that it is currently the world's largest cGMP precision nano-porous silica production plant.

Source: Press Release, PRNewswire