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

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.
Our particle coating offerings provide a variety of approaches for controlling a drug?s release or masking its taste. We have significant proprietary coating knowledge through our acquisition of International Processing Corporation and through the patented OSAT? controlled release and Cleantaste? taste-masking technologies. We also produce ?traditional? oral solid dose forms, including coated and uncoated tablets and filled and empty hard gelatin and cellulose capsules.
Our topical delivery technologies include the Microsponge? and Polytrap? microparticles, liposomal formulations, and ?traditional? cream and ointment formulation and production.
The most recent additions to our technology base are our Sterile Technologies, including drug lyophilization and drug loaded liposomal delivery via large or small unilamellar vesicles. We also offer the unique ?blow-fill-seal? aseptic liquid packaging technology and manufacture almost every traditional sterile dose form.
What further makes Cardinal Health unique in pharmaceutical outsourcing is the services that we offer: formulation development, analytical and stability studies, clinical and commercial supplies manufacturing and packaging, contract sales, and life-cycle maximization strategies. The integration of our proprietary technologies and expert services uniquely enables us to help our customers accelerate product development, enhance product launch, streamline the supply chain, and extend product life.
Q: Cardinal Health?s focus on partnering with a drug molecule?s innovator or licensee is contrary to the ?conventional wisdom? in drug delivery that long-term success requires a transition to self-developed, self-marketed products (like Elan or Alza). How can drug delivery companies succeed while maintaining a platform technology focus?
A: We certainly have a long track record of growth and profitability from our focus on platform technology. The first softgel was commercially produced in 1933. We believe a platform technology focus is not only sustainable, but is also of strong interest to many of our pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers. For a platform technology company to succeed, there are three critical areas of focus: proprietary knowledge and innovation, strong customer alignment, and operational excellence.
The first critical success factor is a commitment to understanding and extending the platform technology. It?s not enough to know that it can work, but how it works and why. This means a complete understanding of the science behind the technology. Once the science is understood, one can identify how to extend and improve upon it. For us, this continuous learning and innovation has yielded hundreds of new patents and patent applications globally, as well as new applications of our technologies coming from customer development programs.
The second critical success factor is strongly focusing on the needs of the customer. We don?t just sell platform technology; we try to understand the needs of the customer and the customer?s market. For example, what competing compounds and dose forms exist or are in the pipeline, and how can our offerings provide them therapeutic or marketing differentiation? Then we provide a creative solution to address those needs across all of our offerings. We also have internally organized many of our customer-facing functions to ensure that our primary focus is on addressing those needs, with cross-functional strategic account and project teams.
The final critical success factor is delivering on what you promise at the right time, the right quality, and the right price. This requires dedicated effort throughout the development, technology transfer, manufacturing, and quality functions. One of the greatest challenges that we?ve seen emerging platform technology companies face is a lack of adequate resources in these key functions, resulting in the inability to deliver operational excellence. We have stayed focused on having the people and infrastructure in place to ensure delivery on the promise.
Q: Does Cardinal Health work with other drug delivery companies?
A: Certainly. We currently have relationships with drug delivery companies in which we manufacture or package clinical or commercial forms of products incorporating their technology. We provide analytical, stability, microbiology, and other services for virtually all dose forms, including the specialized analytical expertise needed for inhalation devices. We can also provide marketing plan development and product launch services for new drugs.
Q: Cardinal Health today has a significant presence in most aspects of drug delivery technology. What?s next?
A: We are committed to identifying the current and future needs of our customers and to meet those needs by providing integrated, enabling technologies and services to bring their quality products to market faster, and deliver greater value?to our customers and ultimately to patients.