Growing trends in formulation development, technology transfer, operations, business strategy, customer centricity, and consumer compliance are opening a plethora of opportunities for players in the pharma and nutraceutical industries. Researchers are now focusing on innovative methods to develop and deliver drugs to meet the consumer’s demand for an ideal wellness regime. This is quite evident with the increasing trend of scientists and researchers filing patents in the field of capsule-based formulations. However, in the coming decade, the majority of these patents will drop off a cliff, giving other pharmaceutical titans a huge opportunity to investigate them for generic products.
Here are a few crucial inquiries that come up:
Complex formulations are currently being developed in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. However, certain challenges, such as API incompatibility, solubility issues, impurity generation, and stability issues, act as roadblocks to the development of generic and differentiated dosage forms. Despite this, researchers prefer to deliver incompatible drug substances in a single dose to improve patient compliance. Various formulation modifications are also done to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of the drugs by increasing their solubility and bioavailability.
In this context, drug delivery in capsules can address many of these challenges. Increasing advancements in encapsulation technology in empty hard capsules help pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies enrich the product lifecycle, thus maintaining a competitive edge. The availability of different combination options like capsules in capsules, tablets in capsules, pellets in capsules, and liquid in capsules opens an abundance of opportunity for formulation scientists to deliver incompatible drugs together. The capsules are manufactured with different polymers, such as gelatin and HPMC (hydroxypropyl methylcellulose), along with modifications in content and design to offer stability and strength to meet customers’ customized requirements. Moreover, there also exist possibilities to explore drug solubility, thus addressing the bioavailability issues.
The questions that now arise are...
To learn more about the above answers...
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Dr. Jnanadeva Bhat
Ph. D
Head - FormulationR&D (Pharma &Nutra)
Jnanadeva has been associated with the pharmaceutical industry for more than two and a half decades. As a product formulator, he has worked on various dosage forms that include tablets, soft gelatin and hard capsules, injectables, and lyophilized formulations. At ACG, he heads the formulation R&D lab, where he primarily leads new product development projects, new promotions, and customer interface. He has several technical white papers and articles published to his credit.
Subhashis Chakraborty
M.Ph, PhD
General Manager, Strategy Product Management and Marketing
Dr. Subhashis Chakraborty holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from IIT, Banaras Hindu University. He has more than 15 years of rich experience with different MNCs at senior management profiles in diversified portfolios, including R&D, business development, sales, and product management.
Presently, Dr. Chakraborty holds the position of General Manager, Global Product Management, for ACG Capsules. In this role, he is responsible for spearheading the new capsule technologies for pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications, right from development to commercialization. Prior to this, Dr. Chakraborty was associated with Evonik India Pvt Ltd for 10 years in different capacities as Regional Sales Director, Director of Key Account Management, Head of Business Development & Contracts, and Head of Technical Services for the Asia-South region, with a focus on supporting major pharmaceutical companies in developing complex injectables using biodegradable polymers. Dr. Chakraborty also worked for 3 years with Lupin Research Park at the initial stage of his career as a formulation development scientist.
Dr. Chakraborty has more than 40 international scientific publications and two book chapters to his credit and has received numerous awards and recognitions all throughout his life for both academic and professional achievements.
Apart from his corporate career, Dr. Chakraborty has recently authored his debut non-fiction book, "Happiness D'Coded," which is now available on all international platforms, including Amazon. Dr. Chakraborty is very passionate about students and likes spending time with them as a coach, mentor, and career counsellor.