Mouth absorption - enhanced outsourcing

US outsourcing company Cardinal Health is to provide alternative drug formulation development and delivery capabilities for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, the company announced this week.

The expanded capabilities - which include the prediction of buccal (mouth) absorption for a drug - are offered through the Pharmaceutical development business side of Cardinal Health.

"We can help our clients open up the development bottleneck, ultimately increasing returns while minimising investment, which for some biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms may mean taking three products to market instead of two, "​ said Tony Chilton, vice president of discovery and pre-clinical support for the Pharmaceutical Development business of Cardinal Health.

Using in-vitro screening models, Cardinal Health maintains that it can predict the optimum dose route for a pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical compound. In addition to Caco-2 cells that predict oral dose routes, Cardinal Health has developed and utilised other cell line models to predict buccal absorption, which allow a drug to be absorbed through the cell membranes in the mouth and go directly into the bloodstream.

"The expanded capabilities allow us to provide cost-effective solutions for the pharmaceutical and biotech companies that don't have the expertise to move beyond the preclinical stage, " added Eric Hoffman, vice president of marketing for the Pharmaceutical Development business of Cardinal Health.

The Pharmaceutical Development business includes five development and manufacturing facilities in the US, one in Schorndorf, Germany and two in the UK - in Swindon and Wingates. The company produced annual revenues of more than €38 billion in 2002.