Pharma Capsules

People

Cook, ABB, Tyco, and Mettler-Toledo Gain New Managment

Cook Pharmica (Bloomington, IN), the contract biopharmaceutical manufacturing division of Cook Medical, named Connie Degen vice-president of operations and Tedd Green vice-president of business operations and chief financial officer.

Degen will direct and oversee all activities of manufacturing, maintenance, manufacturing sciences, and engineering. Green will provide overall strategic leadership by overseeing Cook's fiscal, human resource, project management, business development, marketing programs, policies, and services.

ABB (Zurich, Switzerland) appointed Enrique Santacana as region manager, ABB North America and president and CEO of ABB Inc. USA. Most recently, he was ABB's region division manager for power products in North America.

Tyco International Ltd. (Princeton, NJ) appointed Patrick Decker president of Tyco Flow Control, a business segment of Tyco and provider of flow-control products. Decker joined Tyco in May 2003 as the chief financial officer of Tyco's plastics and adhesives business.

Robert Scott was named the new product manager for X-ray inspection at Mettler-Toledo Safeline (Tampa, FL). Scott will oversee the sale and commissioning of all X-ray units in the Americas.

Standards

US Pharmacopeia Lists EUDRAGIT Polymers

The US Pharmacopeia (Rockville, MD) plans to list monographs of Degussa's (Parsippany, NJ) "EUDRAGIT NE 30 D" and "EUDRAGIT E 100" acrylic polymers in its US Pharmacopeia–National Formulary (USP–NF) beginning Aug. 1. The monographs are titled "Ethyl Acrylate and Methyl Methacrylate Copolymer Dispersion" and "Amino Methacrylate Copolymer," respectively.

Collaboration

JRS Pharma and CoreRx to Develop Coprocessed APIs

JRS Pharma LP (Patterson, NY) and CoreRxPharmaceuticals (Tampa, FL) signed a collaboration agreement, whereby CoreRx will conduct formulation and development work for drugs that have been coprocessed using JRS Pharma's "PROSOLV" technology. The agreement involves investigation of the performance and stability enhancement of generic drug candidates, including cardiovascular, anti-infectives, and anticancer therapies.

Envirotainer, Continental Offer Cold-Chain Services

Envirotainer (Stockholm, Sweden) and Continental Airlines Cargo (Houston, TX) signed a global contract to expand a product line featuring Envirotainer's temperature-controlled, air-cargo containers. The containers are designed as alternatives to traditional cooling methods such as foams and gel packs.

Environtainer recently announced it will focus solely on serving the pharmaceutical industry with various transport solutions, temperature-controlled systems, and cold-chain containers.

Expansion

Dow to Boost PEG Capacity

The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, MI) plans to increase production capacity for its solid-grad "Carbowax Sentry" polyethylene glycols (PEGs) at its St. Charles operations in Hahnville, Louisiana. The company is targeting an increase of about 30% before the end of 2008.

The company's PEG materials are produced in accordance with current good manufacturing practices regulations and meet requirements stated in the US Pharmacopeia–National Formulary, European Pharmacopoeia, and Food Chemicals Codex.

Acquisition

Clondalkin Group Acquires Keller Crescent

Clondalkin Group (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), a producer of packaging products in Europe and the United States, acquired Keller Crescent Co. (Evansville, IN). Details of the transaction were not released.

Keller Crescent produces packaging components, including folding cartons, labels, inserts, and outserts. The company will retain its name and will become part of Clondalkin's North American packaging operations, which consists of 14 manufacturing facilities in seven states and Puerto Rico.

Inspection

SGS India Passes FDA's QC Testing Inspection

SGS India Private Ltd. (Chennai, formerly Madras) received a notification letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, MD) regarding its "acceptable" classification resulting from an FDA inspection conducted in Feb. 2007. This was the first FDA inspection of the SGS quality-control testing laboratory in Chennai. It was both a preapproval inspection and a good manufacturing practices inspection.