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Drug delivery Extending the
effect
Chronic diseases often come with a burden of administering medication routinely throughout the week, or in many cases, the day. Proponents of long-acting injectables wish to change this to make life easier for patients and increase medication adherence. Kim Thomas speaks to Farshad Ramazani, a principal researcher at Novartis, and Professor Andrew Owen, co-director of the Centre of Excellence for Long-acting Therapeutics at the University of Liverpool, to learn about long-acting injectables and the challenges researchers face in trying to bring them to the clinic.
F
or patients managing a chronic illness such as diabetes or schizophrenia, the need for a daily dose of medication creates additional burdens: remembering to take it; ordering and collecting a new prescription when it runs out; and making sure that they have enough medication to take with them when they go away on holiday or for short breaks. As Professor Andrew Owen, co-director of the Centre of Excellence for Long-acting Therapeutics (CELT) at the University of Liverpool, points out, when a patient forgets to take their medication, “this can compromise the efficacy of their therapy”. But what if we could remove those burdens? If, instead of taking a tablet every day, a patient could have a single injection that would last for months? The potential advantages aren’t difficult to imagine; their medication regime would be made easier, reducing the risk of harm caused by forgetting to take a dosage, or even forgetting one has already been taken and adding more of the active pharmaceutical ingredient to the body than it needs. On the other side of the equation, administering fewer injections would reduce the administrative load on doctors and pharmacists. In diseases that carry a social stigma, Owen points out, it would also provide patients with greater privacy.
10 World Pharmaceutical Frontiers /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
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