Pharmaceutical Technologies and How They Benefit the Patient
Advancement in pharmaceutical technology has led to innovation of large number and variety of new medications and novel delivery systems. These have contributed towards increasing the efficacy of the drugs, decreasing the frequency of adverse effects and lesser complicated dosage regimen. These factors increase patient compliance to the prescribed medication hence resulting in better outcome. According to the Financial Times Management report, the worldwide pharmaceutical market was about 78 billion US dollars in 2005, which is expected to reach more than 100 billion US dollars in 2010. The world market for drugs employing advanced pharmaceutical technologies is expanding rapidly and has surpassed by $7 billion in 2005 over the target.
Novel pharmaceutical technologies
Drug delivery technologies are mechanism of delivering the drug in to the body so as to reach the target site. The conventional forms of drug delivery are oral, injection and topical. However, the need for advanced forms of drug delivery persists. Novel drug delivery systems include liposomal, monoclonal antibody-based, and polymer-based technologies host of newer technologies such as nanoparticles including various nanodimensional entities such as molecular imprinted polymers, metallofullerenes, prodrug delivery, implantable, pulmonary, and transdermal and transmucosal delivery systems. These novel technologies are based on multidisciplinary approaches that include polymer science, pharmaceutics, bioconjugate chemistry, and molecular biology.
Benefits
· These pharmaceutical technologies allows for minimizing the drug use that would significantly reduce the effective cost of drug.
· With the advent of pharmaceutical technologies, novel drug delivery systems have evolved. These novel systems can allow branded drugs to be rescued from generic competition.
· Novel drug delivery system may provide sustained or prolonged-release of drugs thereby reducing the frequency of administration of drug and in better patient compliance and reduced adverse effect.
· These technologies allow for masking of unpleasant taste and odor of few drugs and thus making them palatable.
· Pharmaceutical technologies may help in preventing drug from biological degradation and thus improve shelf life of the drug
· Targeted drug delivery is delivering a drug to a specific site in the body where it has the maximum effect, and avoiding drug diffusion to various sites, where it may cause damage or trigger harmful adverse effects.
Conclusion:
Pharmaceutical technology is a large and growing industry and is expected to have a major role in the future as drugs become more complex and difficult to deliver. Novel drug delivery system can overcome administration problem and can be used to achieve improved targeting of the drug to specific site.
