Blogs

West Pharmaceuticals will participate in two poster presentation sessions at the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) Annual Meeting, taking place March 16-18, 2015 in Las Vegas. During the meeting, West will also showcase innovations in integrated drug packaging and delivery systems that help ensure the quality, safety and efficacy of injectable drug products for pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturers worldwide at booth #405.

Lloyd Waxman, Harold Murray and Vinod Vilivalam

Dr. Heike Kofler, Amy Miller, Jennifer Riter
West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.

One of the critical success factors for packaging lyophilized drugs is protection against product degradation caused by moisture. Moisture can be introduced into a lyophilized drug product cake from the elastomeric stopper and from the atmospheric headspace; it can also permeate through the stopper, a process known as moisture transmission.

Tibor Hlobik, Director, Prefillable Solutions and Technologies
Mike Gills, Customer Technical Support Process Engineer

Growth in biopharmaceutical therapeutics is leading innovation with prefillable syringe systems. These complex sensitive drug products require highly inert primary packaging materials for improved stability and delivery in perfect quality for reduced safety risk. This poster will provide a quality comparison of primary prefillable syringe options including glass, coatings/laminates and cyclic olefin polymers, and highlight the findings of a case study comparing 1mL long syringe attributes.

Amy Miller and Jennifer Riter

Extractables from elastomeric components become an issue even before a pharmaceutical drug makes contact with the elastomeric component. The suitability of the elastomer and the drug product needs to be taken into consideration at the development stage of the packaging and delivery system for the drug product. The potential for an extractable to leach into the drug product and the impact that leachable will have on the drug’s stability, efficacy and toxicity needs to be scientifically evaluated.

J. Riter, A. Janssen, D. Engels

Cracking of elastomeric needle shields and tip caps is a costly problem for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Cracked components can cause leaks that can result in loss of drug potency and sterility and may lead to a safety risk for the person administering the drug and the patient. This cracking has been attributed to ozone degradation of the elastomer formulations.