Pricking For Success

: Various forms of new drug delivery technology—orals, injectables, inhalation and trans-dermal—might be making waves. Traditional needle pricking, however, remains the dominant paradigm.

Not to be left behind, Indian biotech majors are also developing newer ways of administering a wide variety of drug therapies. Prominent among these are a new breed of specific drugs that target specific sites of action to treat various forms of disorders—diabetes, various forms of cancer, multiple sclerosis and central nervous system (CNS) diseases. Leading the foray are companies like Biocon, Wockhardt, Sun Pharma, Dr Reddy’s Lab, Panacea Biotec, Dabur Pharma, Shantha Biotech and Bharat Biotech.

“New classes of biotech drugs are fueling the rapid evolution of drug delivery technology. These new drugs typically cannot be effectively delivered by conventional means. For this, drug companies are adopting innovative delivery devices like prefillable and self-injections systems,” says Habil Khorakiwala, chairman, Wockhardt. The rationale, says Arun Chandavarkar, COO, Biocon Ltd, is simple: “Most biotechnology products, being proteins, are currently delivered as injectables. This includes products that need to be administered sub-cutaneously, intravenously or as infusions.” The global market for injectables is fast emerging as the new growth opportunity for Indian biotech companies, adds Khorakiwala.

The $1.5 billion Indian biotech sector is obviously excited. Biotech injectables comprise a little lesser than one-fifth of the $15 billion of the global injectable market. In addition to the US, bigger markets in Europe are Germany, France and UK. With newer biotech injectable drugs coming to market and incidences of diseases requiring injectables, such as diabetes, escalating worldwide, the need for safer devices will continue to grow the market. Probably, this might explain the aggressive R&D programmes at various biotech majors on the development of new products. Says Khorakiwala, “In injections, the emphasis is on manipulating delivery to target specific sites of action (like tumours), or to extend the duration of release and therapeutic action over several days and even months. What these technologies have achieved is to enhance the product life cycle by extending the patent protection, increase the value of the product while also delivering better therapeutic action and patient compliance. These technologies have created multi-billion brands for big life sciences companies, who have taken existing small molecule of complex biologicals and re-formulated them into drug deliveries like Neulasta, PEG-Intron, Lupron depot, Risperdal Consta etc.” Given that most biotech products are in the nature of injectables—therapeutic protein drugs must be administered by injection—the unfolding scenario...