The drug BindRen received approval in Europe in January this year and Mitsubishi Pharma began marketing it in Germany and Austria in April. As the company intends to launch the drug throughout the European territory, it has chosen UK-headquartered NextPharma to provide both primary and secondary packaging for the product.
“Packaging has always been and continues to be a core element of NextPharma’s service offering,” said Alan Dodsworth, NextPharma’s Executive Vice President of Corporate Development to Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
The packaging services will come out of NextPharma’s solids facility in Gottingen, Germany which was refurbished in 2007 and has ghad various expansions since, including a secondary packaging suite for cytotoxics in 2008, the doubling of its blister capacity in 2009 and the addition of a new tablet filling line a year later.
“NextPharma continues to develop partnerships with existing and new customers at this facility and across the rest of its operating platform,” Dodsworth added.
BindRen - a non-absorbed anion exchange resin - is used for the treatment of hyperphosphataemia in adult patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and, though it achieved regulatory approval in the EU earlier this year, has been marketed to treat hypercholesterolemia in Japan (under the brand name Cholebine) since 1999.
US Search
In other news, NextPharma confirmed that it still intends to ramp up its presence in the US.
The firm has been on the lookout for US acquisitions since the firm sold its contract manufacturing business Bioserv to a private equity group last December.
Dodsworth confirmed the company, who spoke previously to Outsourcing-Pharma.com of selling its existing capabilities in Europe, still intended to increase sales and marketing and develop partnerships with US-based clients in order to penetrate the US market.
Bioserv was sold, said Dodsworth, as its focus was on small-scale (clinical trial) sterile product manufacturing. He reiterated NextPharma was still focusing on specialty and conventional (non-sterile) products and technologies as it carries on hunting for US acquisitions.