Azopharma to become centre of excellence

Pharmaceutical companies looking to solve drug formulation challenges are to benefit from the creation of a new centre of excellence in Florida, USA.

Azopharma Product Development, a service provider to the pharma, biotech and medical device industries, will become a centre of excellence through a five-year strategic alliance agreed with ACCU-BREAK Pharmaceuticals (ABP).

Azopharma will provide ABP with access to its range of services, including drug delivery technologies and pharmaceutical and synthetic chemistry services, as well as offering sales and marketing support for ACCU-BREAK technologies, which have a US patent until at least 2025.

Using ACCU-BREAK technologies is believed to have "important implications" for pharmaceutical companies as well as physicians and their patients, according to Azopharma ceo Phil Meeks.

Benefit to pharmaceutical companies including helping them to solve drug challenges, such as separating incompatible active ingredients to produce unique combination therapy products. Physicians are expected to have greater flexibility in dose adjustment and greater safety in the dose titration process, through this alliance. In turn, patients are likely to find it easier to dosing instructions for splitting tablets.

"ABP's patented ACCU-BREAK technologies create an inactive break layer in tablets, allowing them to be broken into accurate partial doses," said ABP ceo Dr Allan Kaplan. "By breaking at the inactive layer, accurate dose splitting can be guaranteed, since the active layer remains undisturbed.

Meeks said; "These new patented technologies will help pharmaceutical companies in many ways. From creating new products utilising these novel technologies to gaining competitive market share by modifying existing products, we expect the pharmaceutical companies to be greatly affected by the ACCU-BREAK technologies."

He added: "Azopharma Product Development Group is only one of a few organisations in the US that are capable of developing a full spectrum of dosage forms from discovery through clinical trial manufacturing.

"By bringing together the best scientists in the field, state-of-the-art facilities and our focus on quality means that we can provide our partners a winning combination in product development."