Novel Uses For Oral Solid Doses Driving Lifecycle Management Strategies

By Anil Kane, Ph.D.

With few potential blockbuster drugs in the pharma pipeline right now, drug companies are increasingly looking at other options to meet the needs of patients and increase revenue in the oral solid dosage (OSD) arena. Current areas of exploration include novel drug combinations, oral delivery of large molecules that were available only as injectables, and perhaps most interesting, drugs that carry digital, ingestible sensors that can send information directly to a physician.

“The new drug pipeline is shrinking,” says Anil Kane, PhD, Global Head of Technical and Scientific Affairs at Patheon, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, a leading contract development and manufacturing organization. “So many companies are looking to expand their product portfolio from their existing molecules. They are looking into many different lifecycle management strategies.”