Pharma73 has developed a biopolymer production technology platform, using microbial fermentation, capable of producing biopolymers that can be tuned to have high functionality properties, ideal to be used as novel excipients for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries. Pharma73’s first product to be launched on the market is HPE-1, a Chitin-Glutan Complex based Biocomposite, consisting in a superior rheology excipient to be used for the production of solid dosage forms (pills). Pharma73’s products aim at solving one of the key aspects in the pharmaceutical industry today: increase the production efficiency and lower its costs. HPE1 promises to set a new standard for excipients for the production of pills and tablets by direct compression.

The excipient HPE1 (Chitin-Glucan Complex) produced by Pharma73, due to its technical features will deliver the high functionality advantages desired by drug formulators without any need of changing their current production equipment. Increase your process efficiency and productivity of drug manufacturing with the following advantages:

Claims:

• HPE1, is a direct compression filler excipient, with superior rheology properties that will allow flowing rates up to 50% higher than the best products currently available in the market, maintaining the required final quality standards.
• HPE1’s superior rheology makes it best solution for processing APIs and powder mixtures, with very poor rheology, by direct compression.
• The absence of reactivity of HPE1 makes it an excellent excipient for solving many stability problems presented by APIs in solid state.

Big Pharmaceutical companies are suffering a large impact on their traditional business model. The Governments of developed countries, such as US, Japan and European Countries, are putting a lot of pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to reduce the costs of their healthcare systems. This pressure triggers two main Scenarios:

1. Patented Drug Producers Business Model: Base their business models on huge R&D spending and large operational margins delivered by high product prices made feasible by the patents’ protection. Critical Issue: The pharmaceutical industry is currently going through the “Patent Cliff”. During this period, that started around 2011, half of the patented drugs will lose patent protection within five years. This fact will lead to stiff competition from generics and a collapse in prices. EvaluatePharma estimated that 13% of global pharmaceutical sales are at risk from generics competition, which can lead to a reduction of up to 85% of the price of a given drug.
2. Generic Producers Business Model: Based on production and commercialization efficiency. Critical Issue: Reduce production costs. Heavily dependent on constantly enhancing production efficiency to secure their profit margins.The drugs manufacturing process is the only stage where pharma companies can achieve performance gains that can impact the profit margin of a final product. Despite representing a small percentage of the final price, the worldwide volume of manufactured drugs is very significant leading to a large impact on the profits. The production efficiency is a very important issue, both in big pharmaceuticals and generics industries. Both subsectors are very eager to reduce production costs and enhance their manufacturing productivities, in order to become more competitive. One way to improve drugs manufacturing productivity is to develop new excipient raw materials that comply with the performance requirements, enhance drugs processability and characteristics as well as allowing a sustainable production process. Excipients are a very significant component of medicines. They are inactive ingredients used to formulate active ingredients into finished dosage forms. Ranging from 15% to 95% of the total weight of a given drug, they are extremely relevant for the drug production process. There has been no significant new excipient development in the last 50 years. Nowadays, the existing excipients lack the flexibility to address the drug’s producers’ business requirements of ever increasing productivity enhancements.