The Pennsylvania-based developer and supplier of injectable technology, Unilife, announced yesterday it had signed a 15-year agreement worth up to $110m (€84m) with a US pharmaceutical company.
Unilife will supply a customised version of its EZMix sytem - prefilled syringes which can hold two or more primary drug containers within a single glass barrel - for use with a lyophilized drug currently entering late-stage clinical development.
Stephen Allan, VP, Marketing & Communications at Unilife, told in-Pharmatechnoloist.com that it would not “disclose confidential information” regarding the client, “their drugs nor their commercial strategies.”
However, according to a conference call discussing results in February, the customer selected Unilife in Q2 of 2013 and the client has secured worldwide exclusivity to EZMix for a particular indication.
Ramin Mojdehbakhsh - Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President at Unilife – told shareholders the “EZMix platform of drug reconstitution systems is now being pursued by more than 15 companies, many of which desire exclusivity within particular therapeutic classes.”
EZMix System
Allan explained the benefits that the system offered both in drug delivery and for pharma clients:
“It can take a dozen complex steps to reconstitute a lyophilized drug from a vial. We can essentially accomplish the same task in one, highly intuitive step that is easy for healthcare workers and patient self-injection,” reducing the risk of dosing error and improving therapy compliance.
“These competitive advantages”, he continued, “can drive preference rates amongst patients, prescribers and payors” and “can be leveraged by pharmaceutical customers to differentiate their injectable therapies from drug rivals to build or protect market share, and maximize revenues.”
Though there are dual chamber syringes available on the market such as Vetter's Lyo-Ject and Sagent's ChaSyr, Allan said Unilife’s offering was the only one with “ventless, orientation free reconstitution, and automatic needle retraction features integrated within the device.”