Aarti Sharma

Orphan drug: Development trends and strategies.

The growth of pharma industries has slowed in recent years because of various reasons such as patent expiries, generic competition, drying pipelines, and increasingly stringent regulatory guidelines. Many blockbuster drugs will loose their exclusivity in next 5 years. Therefore, the current economic situation plus the huge generic competition shifted the focus of pharmaceutical companies from the essential medicines to the new business model — niche busters, also called orphan drugs. Orphan drugs may help pharma companies to reduce the impact of revenue loss caused by patent expiries of blockbuster drugs. The new business model of orphan drugs could offer an integrated healthcare solution that enables pharma companies to develop newer areas of therapeutics, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, and patient support. Incentives for drug development provided by governments, as well as support from the FDA and EU Commission in special protocols, are a further boost for the companies developing orphan drugs. Although there may still be challenges ahead for the pharmaceutical industry, orphan drugs seem to offer the key to recovery and stability within the market. In our study, we have compared the policies and orphan drug incentives worldwide alongwith the challenges faced by the pharmaceutical companies. Recent developments are seen in orphan drug approval, the various drugs in orphan drug pipeline, and the future prospectives for orphan drugs and diseases.

Recent Trends in Oral Drug Delivery: A Review

There are many ways to deliver drugs into the body, viz oral (through swallowing), sub mucosal (through buccal and sublingual mucosa), parenteral (through injection), transdermal (through skin), pulmonary (through inhalation) etc. Among these deliveries oral delivery (by swallowing) is widely accepted. In oral drug delivery, many scientific challenges and breakthrough technologies are required to generate novel dosage forms raising drug delivery to higher level. Some are self emulsifying systems, solid self nanoemulsion, polymeric micelles, spray freezing, pH controlled systems, time delayed system, osmotic pumps, prodrugs etc. This paper reviews recent patents, technologies and products with their importance, manufacturing and novel approaches implemented till date to overcome the challenges in oral drug delivery systems.

Quercetin- A Flavanoid

This paper reviews role of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) for sustainable development of bioplastics. PHAs are polyesters of hydroxyalkanoates with the general structural and have been investigated by biologists, chemists, engineers and other experts over the past many years. Bio-based and biodegradable plastics can form the basis for environmentally referable and sustainable alternative to current materials based exclusively on petroleum feed stocks. The result of the efforts made by scientist sought solution in form of biopolymer obtained either from microorganism or plants source and likely to replace currently used synthetic polymers as bioplastic. Applications of PHA as bioplastics, fine chemicals, implant biomaterials, and medicines have been developed. The PHA polymers promise to extend significantly the range of biomaterials as suitable alternative of plastic.

E-tongue: a tool for taste evaluation.

Taste has an important role in the development of oral pharmaceuticals. With respect to patient acceptability and compliance, taste is one of the prime factors determining the market penetration and commercial success of oral formulations, especially in pediatric medicine. Taste assessment is one important quality-control parameter for evaluating taste-masked formulations. Hence, pharmaceutical industries invest time, money and resources into developing palatable and pleasant-tasting products. The primary method for the taste measurement of a drug substance or a formulation is by human sensory evaluation, in which tasting a sample is relayed to inspectors. However, this method is impractical for early stage drug development because the test in humans is expensive and the taste of a drug candidate may not be important to the final product. Therefore, taste-sensing analytical devices, which can detect tastes, have been replacing the taste panelists. In the present review we are presenting different aspect of electronic tongue. The review article also discussed some useful patents and instrument with respect to E-tongue.

High speed counter current chromatography: A support-free LC technique

As separation of components is the major requirement of an analytical chemist, there is always a need for a convenient high throughput technique with minimum sample loss, high efficiency, high resolution, and ease of sample recovery, without contamination. This leads to the development of High Speed Counter Current Chromatography (HSCCC), in which the stationary phase is liquid instead of solid, and that provides a lot of advantages over other chromatographic techniques. In addition, advanced centrifugal partition technology is used to hold the liquid stationary phase in the column, while the liquid mobile phase is pushed through it, which provides high yield and purity. This review highlights the major applications of HSCCC that include extraction of medicinal drugs from plants and purification and isolation of active material, plant analysis, separation of rare earth elements, preparative-scale separations of chiral compounds, analysis of inorganic compounds and elements, drug discovery, and drug development. Separation of dipeptides and proteins, flavonoids, alkaloids, DNP amino acids, indole auxins, and so on, proves the versatile and dynamic nature of the technique.

Intellectual property: A strong determinant of economic growth

The returns from almost all human endeavors can ultimately be translated into monetary gains. The past few years have seen increased attention paid to the strengthening of intellectual property rights due to globalization. The development of Intellectual property rights (IPR) over the years has invariably brought an upsurge in the outlook of nations toward the aspect of societal and cultural growth, this being said with the preliminary assumption that economic growth has been the most affected realm and that it requires a separate spectrum of analysis. The artifacts between the IP regime and the national economy can be easily interpreted by the fact that Indias independence had itself brought an era where the enactment of the national IP laws were considered to stand on the touchstone of the market economy. The aim of the present article is to investigate the impact of a strong IP regime on the economic development of a nation and also a light is raised into Indian economy, and the creation of an efficient innovative system is discussed. A strong relation of the IPR with the pharma and biotech sectors has been discussed. Undoubtedly, the Intellectual property (IP) systems must be developed so as to bring in socioeconomic well-being. The fact that a strong IPR actually provokes IPR infringements in many developing nations also seems to be an issue that needs to be analyzed while understanding the need of the former. The trade-off between unfair competition laws and IP also assumes importance of high magnitude and hence needs to be particularly emphasized. With the growing recognition of IPR, the importance of worldwide forums on IPR has been realized. Companies, universities, and industries want to protect their IPR internationally. In order to reach this goal, countries have signed numerous agreements and treaties.