| Kevin Maynard, Business Development Director at Imprint Pharmaceuticals Ltd, investigates the solublisation and recovery of injectable pharmaceutical materials, and the importance of usability and safety for end users
Many injectable drugs need to be reconstituted either at home or in the clinic. Special devices have been developed to improve the reproducibility, simplicity and safety of the reconstitution of these therapies for end users, including healthcare workers and patients.
Pharmaceutical companies are becoming ever more successful in bringing the fruits of the human genome project to market. Treatment of diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and diabetes are being transformed by these therapies. However, many of the therapies require injection and, hence, come with all the complications, both technical and presentational, that injectable therapies bring.
Many of these therapies require frequent injections; depending on the nature of the disease and the patient’s individual condition, those injections could be weekly, daily, or even more frequent.
Many injectable therapeutics are stored as powders; they are more stable in this form. Therapeutics stored as a powder need to be solublised with a liquid diluent and transferred to an injection device before being injected, resulting in an additional operation for untrained users to carry out. This step can be quite complex, with multiple variants in the reconstitution process depending on the therapy, the delivery device and the user’s setting and knowledge. This creates significant issues for those unaware of the problem. |
