The tech, known as P-Gels, has been a focus for the company since it partnered with Colombian capsule maker Procaps this January.
Updating us at this years’ Interphex conference in New York, Geoff Glass told us the fact that Procaps manufactures its own production equipment for P-Gels – not widely known in the industry before the acquisition – means cheaper and more flexible gel development than ever before.
The VP of sales and marketing told in-PharmaTechnologist: “Procaps manufacture their own soft gel manufacturing equipment. This allows an unprecedented level of flexibility for our customers so, if they needed more capacity, P-Gels can bring it online almost immediately.”
He added that the technology has the ability to “open the door in the fixed dose combination, and controlled release areas,” and said that with some of the gels, for instance Unigels, Patheon has the corner on the market.
“Unigel technology that allows us to put a soft gel within a soft gel, a tablet within a soft gel, or granules within a soft gel or any combination thereof,” he said.
“It unlocks a whole set of being able to do controlled release extended release in a way that hasn’t been done before. The processes can be a lot cheaper that these multi-access coding, or bi-layer tri-layer tablets that have been used historically in other dose forms.”
Supply and demand
Glass said Patheon’s decision to work with a new gel platform was based on demand from existing clients as well as potential new customers.
“There haven’t been a lot of suppliers in the soft gel technology area,” he said. “We had a significant demand from existing and potential new customers for a quality, reliable provider as alternative to existing providers.”
And judging by the reaction at Interphex, Glass predicts the platform will generate big business for the CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organisation).
“We had our first set of client meetings with a whole host of customers from Big Pharma to generics companies to smaller firms,” he told us. “Everyone is pretty interested.
“The smaller companies, or some of the generics developing innovative combos - that’s where this new tech will come into play. They’re very interested for what this can unlock.”
To hear more about Patheon's partnership with Procaps click below...