Future Proof: CPhI Worldwide imagines pharma’s growth over the next five years

CPhI Worldwide has announced the part iii of the 2016 CPhI Annual Report. The report focuses on growth opportunities over the next five years specifically generics consumption and approval process, the use of big data in pharma and the potential of 3D printed formulations.

Four experts give their opinions on the implications on clinical trial design, generic drug time to market and individualised patient dosage forms.

The report indicates that pharma may be headed towards a new age of high tech applications, as new technologies become more commonplace in the industry. The manufacturing sector could benefit from the inclusion of 3D printing, as drugs could be individually 3D printed to meet a patient’s requirement.

In generics, overall growth is predicted to continue to expand rapidly, but with the caveat that faster approvals are need to improve time to market and patient benefit.

Alan Sheppard, principal, Global Generics at IMS Health states that we will now see fewer generic opportunities in the next five years due to a lower number of significant small molecules losing exclusivity.

Whilst the US will remain as the single largest profit generator, China is set to become the second largest market by 2020. Japan is likely to achieve its 80% generics useage goal ahead of its 2021 target and Europe will remain the most competitive and leading in the use of biosimilars.

Dilip Shah, CEO at Vision Consulting, however, warns of potential drag factors on the rapid utilisation of generics, imploring the industry to look towards the use of a single reference product for generics (like is the case for approval of patented drugs) – rather than using data from each market, as this slows down approvals and increases costs.

Shah advocates that the industry and regulator need to work more closely together, specifically in terms of training and implementation. Shah believes that ‘capability building’ and regulatory convergence will begin to occur over the next three years.

Emil Ciurczak of Doramaxx Consulting predicts changes in how the industry manufactures final dosage forms for the patient. He states that 3D printing will act as an important emergine technology, individualizing dosage form printing on demand for orphan drugs – combining two or more active ingredients together in a single tablet, and using complex layers to alter the release profile.

President and CSO at Pharmatech Associates, Bikash Chatterjee realises the next decase of therapeutic drug development as being dependent upon more effective means of data mining and data analytics. He sees the emerging field of big data offering transformational application in pharma. 

Chris Kilbee, group director Pharma at CPhI Worldwide: “In the last few years there has been a notable shift in the industry and increasingly pharma customers, both generic and patented manufactures, are looking for new technologies and approaches – be that regulatory, digital or manufacturing. At CPhI Worldwide we have mirrored this change and each year deliver the latest news and trends through the CPhI Annual Report and our onsite content sessions. As the industry’s annual meeting point, the event is a central node in helping speed up new partnerships to bring these products and technologies to market faster. The discussions had this week will be vital in furthering pharma development and implementing more advanced manufacturing and drug development.”