This year at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, Dow and Dow Corning made their first joint appearance since the Dow completed its acquisition of Dow Corning’s silicone business in June.
The companies displayed their latest innovations in drug delivery tech, and showcased how those products are a boon to both pharmaceutical manufacturers and consumers alike.
Here’s a look at those products, with more on why they’re creating buzz in the pharma world.
SilAc Hybrid Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSAs)
Patches are a crucial segment of the drug delivery industry and an important option for doctors. Because patches deliver continuous doses of needed Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) and by pass the GI Tract, they are an alternative delivery for patients.
Two major adhesive technologies used in drug patches are silicone and acrylic polymers and both have been used for many years. The technology choice is based on the API, solubility, wear time and the release profile of the API from the patch matrix.
Now, Dow Corning has released a new adhesive that combines silicone and acrylic to provide formulators more patch design options.
“Instead of having a plain cake, we now have a multi-layered cake,” explains Gary Lord, the Global Strategic Marketing Manager in Medical Solutions at Dow Corning.
Lord says there has been a lot of interest in PSAs and a high number of requests for samples.
Dow Corning’s PSAs are on the market on a restricted basis and are in the process of being commercialized for wider distribution.
AFFINISOL
AFFINISOL is aimed at improving drug manufacturing by targeting solubility enhancement of poorly water soluble molecules.
“The use of high throughput screening methods have resulted in up to 70 percent of new molecules in drug development pipelines having poor water solubility” Lord explains.
“Low aqueous solubility severely limits a compound’s oral bioavailability and therefore also limits the commercial viability of a new product” he added. “AFFINISOL is there for the formulator in the pharmaceutical company to help increase the API solubility in order to achieve therapeutically relevant and reproducible concentrations within the blood and thus a successful drug product.”
Silicone-Based Ingredients For Skin Management
This class of products was developed by Dow Corning to improve compliancy with topical treatments for acne, psoriasis and more. Instead of consumers using formulations that are greasy or difficult to spread on the skin, the use of silicone-based ingredients helps make the treatments easier and more pleasant for consumers to use.
According to Lord, the silicone-based ingredients have been available in the EU for a few years and were recently released in the U.S.
