Personalised medicine

Pharma­pack Europe – organ­ised by UBM – closed its most excit­ing edi­tion to date, tak­ing place at Paris Expo, Porte De Ver­sailles on 7 and 8 Feb­ru­ary 2018. Europe’s biggest phar­ma pack­ag­ing and drug deliv­ery exhi­bi­tion and con­fer­ence high­light­ed upcom­ing trends in the indus­try with experts deliv­er­ing an in-depth media debate focussing on smart and intel­li­gent pack­ag­ing, the increas­ing role that the inter­net has on the indus­try, and the poten­tial impli­ca­tions of upcom­ing reg­u­la­to­ry changes.
As per­son­alised med­i­cines become more and more promi­nent in today’s indus­try, Pro­fes­sor Phillipe Arnaud – Chief of Phar­ma­cy Depart­ment at Bichat-Claude Bernard Hos­pi­tal and ANSM Expert – believes that cus­tomer feed­back will be at the fore­front of phar­ma pack­ag­ing in the future. He envis­ages that with social media sites patients can write feed­back to com­pa­nies about cer­tain aspects of the pack­ag­ing or device that they may not like. Com­pa­nies can then utilise this raw data, which can lead to a quick­er evo­lu­tion of new pack­ag­ing with the opin­ion of the patients in mind.
In con­trast to this, Dr. Pas­cale Gau­thi­er – from the Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal depart­ment of the Phar­ma­cy fac­ul­ty at Auvergne Uni­ver­si­ty – argued that although the inter­net can bring ben­e­fits, it will raise prob­lems, such as those with coun­ter­feit­ing. Many peo­ple are so busy that they may not have time to see a doc­tor and so they are increas­ing­ly look­ing to the inter­net for their med­i­cine ­– how­ev­er most of the time these are coun­ter­feit­ed prod­ucts, some­thing which may become an increas­ing prob­lem in 2018.
With the impend­ing FDM/DSCSA dead­lines in mind, Mr Lionel Jean­nin – Glob­al Device & Pack­ag­ing Devel­op­ment at Novar­tis Phar­ma AG – com­ment­ed that the poten­tial impacts on man­u­fac­tur­ing lines are vast, as com­pa­nies must adapt their process­es to the changes. It is a huge pro­gramme to put in place and he imag­ines there will be a scram­ble for last minute changes in the lat­ter half of the year as com­pa­nies that haven’t put plans in place for the dead­lines are look­ing to catch up. He adds that he doesn’t fore­see the impend­ing dead­lines sig­nif­i­cant­ly imped­ing the drugs sup­ply pipeline.
All of the judges agreed that there was a need for infor­ma­tion on drugs – such as leaflets – to become more acces­si­ble to patients. They sug­gest­ed there are tech­nolo­gies avail­able to do this, high­light­ing that intel­li­gent pack­ag­ing was like­ly to see a lot of invest­ment in the com­ing years. How­ev­er, they also said that the indus­try shouldn’t rush into imple­ment­ing these tech­nolo­gies as some ther­a­pies may raise ques­tions of over­step­ping the bound­aries of pri­va­cy – such as doc­tors track­ing drugs to see if patients have tak­en their rec­om­mend­ed dosage.
The 2018 con­fer­ence agen­da enabled atten­dees to stay up-to-date with the lat­est trends and devel­op­ments in the indus­try, com­pris­ing of four in-depth ses­sions.  The ‘Reg­u­la­to­ry Changes and Impacts’ ses­sion looked at tam­per ver­i­fi­ca­tion guide­lines, inter­na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion for child resis­tant pack­ag­ing (CRP) and ster­ile pack­ag­ing. A keynote dis­cus­sion explored the effects bio­log­i­cal com­bi­na­tion prod­ucts are hav­ing on device devel­op­ment dur­ing the ‘Chal­lenges in Pack­ag­ing & Devices Devel­op­ment’ session.
The con­fer­ence also explored the how ‘New­er Drug Deliv­ery Devices Will Rev­o­lu­tionise Patient Life and Improve Treat­ment Adher­ence’ look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at nee­dle free injec­tions, nasal deliv­ery and patient cen­tric pack­ag­ing. But with more biotech and start-up com­pa­nies cre­at­ing a new wave of inno­va­tions the ‘Call For Chal­lenges and Start-Ups’ ses­sion reviewed scale-up chal­lenges and the cur­rent start-up ecosystem.
Final­ly, the Inno­va­tion Gallery returned to Pharma­pack to show­case 23 of the exhibitors’ most excit­ing inno­va­tions, with the Pharma­pack Start-Up Hub fea­tur­ing a new and excit­ing addi­tion: the ‘Start-Up Pitch’. This pro­vid­ed entre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­nies with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pitch their inno­v­a­tive ideas to a pan­el of judges, each being allo­cat­ed a 5‑minute time slot. Putting empha­sis on the wider trends observed at the event, some of the prod­ucts fea­tured includ­ed: Sar­alon, print­ed elec­tron­ics for smart pack­ing in order to com­bat coun­ter­feit­ing; Lin­gua­nomics RD, an IT& IoT com­pa­ny with a dig­i­tal med­ical label that allows patients to get infor­ma­tion of a prod­uct on their smart­phone; and Ver­a­trak, a cloud enter­prise that secures the phar­ma sup­ply chain using blockchain technology.

Anne Schu­mach­er, Brand Direc­tor at Pharma­pack Europe commented,“This year’s edi­tion of Pharma­pack has been very excit­ing, with the event con­tin­u­ing to inspire inno­va­tion through­out the indus­try. But it also showed what a great year there is poten­tial­ly ahead, push­ing on with new inno­va­tions and prod­ucts. Pharma­pack is now the vital con­duit for exec­u­tives look­ing for new part­ners, to access com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion on the lat­est trends and do the deals dri­ving for­ward phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pack­ag­ing and drug delivery.”