Cardinal Health?s Pharmaceutical Technologies & Services Group: Integrating Proprietary Technologies & Expert Services to Accelerate Product Development - Regulatory Issues

Cardinal Health?s Pharmaceutical Technologies & Services Group: Integrating Proprietary Technologies & Expert Services to Accelerate Product Development
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Drug Delivery Technology
The drug delivery landscape has changed significantly over the past 5 years. Mergers, consolidations, and self-marketed products from delivery companies all have accelerated the shift away from the pure ?platform technology? drug delivery company model.
Cardinal Health, Inc, has not been a familiar name to most people in the drug delivery industry. Yet today, Cardinal Health?s Pharmaceutical Technologies & Services group is the largest global provider of platform drug delivery technologies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies around the world. They are committed to offering innovative drug delivery options to their customers, rather than pursuing the ?specialty pharmaceutical? migration path common to most large drug delivery companies.
Drug Delivery Technology interviewed Dr. David Savello, Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer for Cardinal Health?s Pharmaceutical Technologies & Services Group, to understand Cardinal Health?s unique perspective and the range of technologies and services that this significant new player in the pharmaceutical outsourcing market offers.
Q: Cardinal Health has in the past been principally associated with the drug distribution business in the United States. How and why did Cardinal Health gain such a significant presence in pharmaceutical outsourcing?
A: Cardinal Health has long been committed to helping pharmaceutical manufacturers and care providers improve patient care through innovations in the availability and distribution of pharmaceutical and medical products. In the mid-1990s, it identified the opportunity for innovative supply-chain integration focused upon the needs and challenges of pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop improved pharmaceuticals and bring them to patients faster. Since then, we have acquired more than a dozen businesses and also continued to invest in extending our technology, capabilities, and capacity, offering creative outsourcing solutions to pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturers. Today, the Pharmaceutical Technologies & Services group has approximately $1.2 billion in revenues and nearly 9,000 employees around the globe.
Q: What drug delivery technologies does Cardinal Health currently offer?
A: We offer oral, topical, and parenteral dose forms and a broad range of related formulation, analytical, stability, and clinical services.
For oral delivery, we have a range of proprietary and standard delivery technologies. First, our softgel capsules (from the 1998 acquisition of R.P. Scherer) and our patented RPScherersol? formulation approaches allows for a drug to be delivered in solution in an oral dosage form, resulting in more complete and faster absorption and, therefore, faster onset of action all in a strongly consumer-preferred form. Our Zydis? fast-dissolving tablet technology is the industry ?gold standard,? used in more than a dozen products around the world. Zydis? can be administered without water and for patients who may have difficulty swallowing. For certain types of drugs, Zydis? can promote pregastric absorption of drug.