Almac ramps up multiparticulate drug delivery services in UK

08-Oct-2015 - Last updated on 09-Oct-2015 at 10:52 GMT

Demand for multiparticulate drug delivery systems has led Almac to add fluid-bed processing and encapsulation services to its pharma offering.

Multiparticulate delivery systems are capsule products that contain pellets, beads, granules and mini-tablets.

Almac said increasing pharmaceutical industry demand for this type of formulation prompted its acqusition of $10m (€8.8m) of dedicated manufacturing equipment at its site in Craigavon, UK.

“We are witnessing an increase in demand for these technologies across the board, particularly for companies which are seeking to optimise drug performance of NMEs whilst enhancing patient tolerance,” John McQuaid, Almac’s VP Technical Operations for Pharma Services, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.

Specifically, the company has qualified both Glatt GPCG PRO 120 fluid bed processor and an IMA Adapta 100 high speed encapsulator.

These will support customers’ commercial-scale projects, complementing Almac’s small-scale fluid-bed and encapsulation technologies.

Making multiparticulate products can be challenging, McQuaid told us, and while “the development & scale-up of processes to produce multi-particulate systems is not so difficult, it requires technical experience to determine process conditions suitable to control the manufacture and performance characteristics of the product.”

“Once these are optimised, multi-particulate systems can deliver reliable and robust drug release tailored to the patient centred requirements of the dosage form,” he continued.

“Some of the down-stream processes such as encapsulation will involve more sophisticated engineered dosing systems, but again technical experience in running these processes will yield consistent and robust products.”