The new tech – known as Instamodel – combines high viscosity cellulosic polymers and excipients that can be mixed with APIs directly and compressed into tablets.
Ideal Cures’ pitch is that the new tech is ‘ready-to-use’ and can be applied to a product in as little as two weeks, compared with the average four months it takes to apply traditional excipient systems - include those based on pH dependent acrylic polymers, xanthan gums or sodium alginate - which require R&D, pilot plant development, stability studies and commercial scale-up.
Similarly the firm claims that Instamodel offers manpower savings, estimating that traditional extended-release (ER) coatings required an additional 10 staff to conduct R&D, pilot tests and scale up than its own product.
Mid-sized targets
Managing director Suresh Pareek told in-Pharmatechnologist.com that: “Instamodel has been developed to meet the needs of mid-sized pharma that may not have sufficient man power, expertize and facilities for the development of extended release formulations.”
He predicted that mid-sized companies that use the product could see total development costs of as little as $7,000 to $10,000 per product, which represents a significant saving over existing systems.
Pareek also suggested that generic drugmakers looking to launch their products quickly can apply the technology to products rapidly on the basis that Ideal Cures has already completed the R&D.
Ideal Cures will produce the new coating at its facilities in Vasai and Jammu in India, which can produce 400 tons per year combined in both plants and will initially support make the product available in Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The Instamodel launch follows just a few months after Ideal Cures rolled out an alginic acid delayed release (DR) coating for active pharmaceutical ingredients, nutraceuticals and food that it claims has stability advantages over shellac and starch-based coatings.