Dosage Forms

A Pharmaceutical Technology report looks at trends in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. This article contains bonus online-exclusive material.

High-potency manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients is a growing and specialized capability.

The authors discuss how strategic outsourcing to contract manufacturing organizations that have technical and regulatory expertise can add further value during vaccine development.

Biopharmaceutical companies generally try to avoid paying royalties on novel technologies, including novel expression systems, in part because of the inability to predict revenue flow after a product is commercialized.

The emergence of influenza A (H1N1) and the efforts to provide vaccines to the vulnerable are timely examples of biopharmaceuticals' continuing importance.

To address the increasing popularity of drug-injector systems, the US Food and Drug Administration last week released a Draft Guidance for Industry titled, Technical Considerations for Pen, Jet, and Related Injectors Intended for Use with Drugs and Biological Products.

To address the increasing popularity of drug-injector systems, the US Food and Drug Administration last week released a Draft Guidance for Industry titled, Technical Considerations for Pen, Jet, and Related Injectors Intended for Use with Drugs and Biological Products.

Bulk Inspection of Tablets-Symetix Applicaton Note

Pharmacosomes can pass through biomembranes efficiently and possess several advantages over traditional vesicular drug-delivery systems.

There may well be a pending revolution in biopharmaceutical expression systems. Nearly 50% of biomanufacturers today are demanding a whole lot more from their primary expression systems than they have during the past 30 years.

Understanding a formulation's variable effects on its properties, especially film permeability, is key to designing a robust formulation and reducing variation of a finished product.

The importance of liposomes as an effective drug delivery system is well accepted in the pharmaceutical industry, but their handling remains a challenge.

The Question-Based Review (QbR) initiative of the Office of Generic Drugs has reached its second full year in 2009. Special from the Journal of Validation Technology.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week placed an initial order with Sanofi Pasteur (Lyon, France) for a vaccine to fight influenza A (H1N1) infection.

Sanofi-aventis announced this week that it plans to construct a new vaccine-manufacturing center in Neuville-sur-Saône, France.

Covance talks about the risks, challenges, and tests required to develop a pandemic vaccine.

Based on formulation simplicity and blinding capability, hard gelatin capsules are preferrable compared with other oral solid dosage forms, including tablets, in the early clinical phases of drug development.

Orally disintegrating tablets offer numerous advantages compared with traditional tablets and capsules, and can be an effective solution for developing line extensions of currently marketed therapies.

Bulk Inspection of Tablets-Symetix Application Note

The identification of an increasing number of drug targets coupled with advances in manufacturing technology could lead to many more blockbuster therapeutic antibodies.

The authors discuss current and future disposable technologies and outline the validation and qualification steps that would be required for a possible disposable process stream.

The authors review the role of automation in aseptic processing and describe their experience in implementing advanced technologies, including the use of isolators and robotics.

Follow-on biologics or biosimilars offer a niche growth market for the pharmaceutical industry. As the process for establishing a regulatory pathway for biosimilars is debated, companies, including Big Pharma, are positioning themselves to gain this piece of the pharmaceutical pie.

The number of biotechnology-based human therapeutic products in the late-stage pipeline along with the average cost to commercialize a biotech product has been steadily increasing with time. In addition, the biotech industry is facing unprecedented challenges of a sagging global economy and rising regulatory expectations. Companies have to continue to evolve their approaches to be more efficient with respect to time, resources and cost. This article describes some of the technologies that can help optimize time and cost of biopharmaecutical manufacturing.

The authors examine common superdisintegrants (i.e., crospovidone Type A, crospovidone Type B, croscarmellose sodium, and sodium starch glycolate) with a set of poorly soluble drug actives and evaluate in vitro drug dissolution.

A bipartisan bill that would establish a regulatory pathway for the approval of biosimilars was introduced into the US House of Representatives last week.

The spotlight on the biopharmaceutical industry is intensifying, as recently evidenced by Pfizer's (New York) ongoing acquisition of Wyeth (Madison, NJ), which was initiated partly to reduce the former's dependence on small-molecule drugs.

The authors extend the range of a near-infrared calibration model for tablet assay using production 'seed' spectra and synthetic spectra generated from placebos and 'pure' active pharmaceutical ingredient spectra.

Michiel Ultee talks about the challenges involved in transferring technology to a CMO and why communication is so important.

The productivity of the pharma industry has been declining for several years. Could biotechnology reinvigorate drug development?