General Articles

Managing expectations is the new alchemy. All manipulators of opinion, from the US president down to the humblest peddler, now seek to minimize what people expect from them, hoping to maximize the effect of a better-than-expected performance.Even pharmaceutical marketers know the drill: don’t promise too much for any serious-disease treatment, especially if it seems miraculous. Downplay the benefits, then let others sing its praises when the results prove surprising. The tactic often works well for products new to the market or still in research, as long as the outcome exceeds the original expectations—if o­nly by a little.

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Jim Miller
Pharmaceutical Technology, Mar 2004

Abstract

Classical prodrug design often represents a nonspecific chemical approach to mask undesirable drug properties such as limited bioavailability, lack of site specificity, and chemical instability. o­n the other hand, targeted prodrug design represents a new strategy for directed and efficient drug delivery. Particularly, targeting the prodrugs to a specific enzyme or a specific membrane transporter, or both, has potential as a selective drug delivery system in cancer chemotherapy or as an efficient oral drug delivery system. Site-selective targeting with prodrugs can be further enhanced by the simultaneous use of gene delivery to express the requisite enzymes or transporters. This review highlights evolving strategies in targeted prodrug design, including antibody-directed enzyme prodrug therapy, gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy, and peptide transporter-associated prodrug therapy.

In a tradition of some 75 years of hospital pharmacy in the Netherlands intramural pharmaceutical care has evolved greatly. Dutch hospital pharmacists traditionally focussed o­n the technical aspects of pharmaceutical products within their hospital. Drug production at a semi-industrial scale, analyses in their own laboratories and purchase and distribution were their fields of competence. Their expertise made them well-respected local medication experts. When, in the 1960s, drug distribution started to focus o­n distribution to individual patients, it was a natural development to enter the clinic. The introduction of unit-dose packaging, adopted from the US, made for safer drug distribution. It came to include the structured recording of pharmacotherapy in patient dossiers thus allowing medication monitoring, interventions based o­n specific patient features and other specific therapy adjustments.

Over the two and a half years that I've been writing this Column about o­nce every six months I have looked at the continuing debate over the accreditation of RM producres.

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Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is a most flexible and versatile chromatographic technique and therefore remains an indispensable tool for many applications. Applications range from monitoring of chemical reactions, comparison of fractions, and preparative separations to qualitative analyses such as identification of raw materials, tests for adulterations, and detection of biological activity to demanding quantitative determinations including assays, impurity profiling, and cleaning validation. In addition to traditional TLC plate development in an enclosed tank, there are also gradient and even forced flow techniques now available. The variety of stationary phases for planar separations is quite large, and it would be difficult to cover the subject comprehensively in this column. Therefore, in the present coverage, we will focus o­nly o­n TLC plates used in the state-of-the-art qualitative and quantitative high-performance separations.

The world's steadily growing o­ncology market features key elements that are common to all competitors in the category: a highly respected sales forces, sophisticated and deeply involved patients and caregivers, clinically entrepreneurial physicians, and a dynamic global regulatory environment. Yet the uncharted territory of cancer breakthroughs demands that pharma marketers temper a strategy of progressive risk with caution.

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NuSil Technology is a leading formulator of silicone compounds for aerospace, healthcare, electronics, and other applications requiring precise, predictable, cost-effective materials performance. ISO-9001 certified since 1994, NuSil operates state-of-the-art laboratories and processing facilities in both North America and Europe and provides o­n-site, in-person application engineering support worldwide. Earlier this year, the company announced the acquisition of Rhodia Silicones’ long-term implantable silicones business. Long-term implantable silicones are used in medical device products implanted for 29-days or more. Drug Delivery Technology interviewed Richard A.

Abstract

The goal of this study was to investigate factors that influence consumers' perceptions of service encounter satisfaction, overall service quality, and trust in the service provider for pharmacist consultation services. We used the Dynamic Process Model of Service Quality as the framework for investigating the formation of these evaluations. Consumers' prior expectations of what should and will transpire during the service episode(s) and the performance level of the actual delivered service during the service encounter(s) were hyphothesized to affect satisfaction, quality, and trust. Two experiments using a 2 x 2 x 2 fully crossed factorial design were used for collecting and analyzing data. The results showed that normative (should) and predictive (will) expectations play differential roles in consumers' evaluation of satisfaction, perception of quality, and trust in the service provider.

The process of identifying and selecting an outsource provider is o­ne of the most important steps in the research, development and manufacturing of many pharmaceutical products. Yet this seems to be o­ne of the most overly simplified and typically o­ne of the most rushed activities in the industry today.

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