ARx opens new facility

The new 25,000 sq ft. facility, located adjacent to the company's existing Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, campus, has been designed to manufacture oral dissolvable film, transdermal and buccal drug delivery systems. The new facility, the cost of which was undisclosed, would triple ARx's manufacturing capacity and laboratory space, while quadrupling thin film strip output to more than 1.4 billion strips per year. "We have been supplying component materials to our drug delivery partners for over 20 years and they have been asking us to formulate those materials and coatings to include their specific Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients. The new facility allows us to handle these ingredients with the appropriate controlled and compliant processes and also give us the capacity we need to grow the business,"​ ARx spokesman George Cramer told US-PharmaTechnologist.com. ARx, a subsidiary of Adhesives Research, supports multiple commercial thin film products sold in the US, Canada and Latin America, including Novartis' Triaminic Thin Strips pediatric and infant cough and cold products, Theraflu Thin Strips cold and flu products, and Gas-X Thin Strips anti-gas relief products. The facility, which first broke ground 18 months ago, will also have a collaborated research and development sector of over-the-counter and prescription drugs, including thin film, transdermal, biopharmaceutical and oral/mucosal systems. "We have used our knowledge and twenty-plus years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry to build a modern, globally-compliant facility that allows us to streamline the manufacturing process and create an efficient and flexible process for our clients,"​ ARx vice president and general manager Beth Vondrak said in a statement. The dissolvable oral thin film industry has been estimated to be valued at about $500m, according to consulting service Technology Catalysts, and could reach $2bn by 2010 given the popularity of the drug delivery system and advances into diverse therapeutic areas.