A PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com/techcenter) report, "Personalized Medicine: The Emerging Pharmacogenomics Revolution," notes, "Pharmacogenomics... promises to usher in an era of individualized patient care or personalized medicine. Despite its promise, pharmacogenomics faces significant technical and societal challenges." Add packaging to that list. Many of today's drugs are packaged on equipment and lines designed to efficiently produce large volumes at high speeds, so the idea of packaging drugs for individual patients could set that packaging strategy on its ear, right? Not necessarily.
Equipment manufacturer Maverick Enterprises, Inc. (www.maverickinc.biz), for example, introduced Nutri-Pac, a dispensing and packaging system that produces 50 custom packs/min, with up to eight different tablets/pack.
"At present," the PWC report notes, "the costs and risks of bringing pharmacogenomics technologies in-house do not make financial sense to the larger pharmaceutical companies."
Hurdles aside, it's worth a visit to www.fda.gov/cder/genomics, where you'll read that the "FDA recognizes the importance of pharmacogenomics and encourages its use in drug development."
The agency recently developed an initiative called "Critical Path to Personalized Medicine," to help "identify projects and advance collaborations needed to overcome product development bottlenecks and support personalized medicine."
There will always be a need for high-speed, high-volume packaging machinery, but for manufacturers, now is the time to determine if your packaging operation will be ready to "get personal."
Equipment manufacturer Maverick Enterprises, Inc. (www.maverickinc.biz), for example, introduced Nutri-Pac, a dispensing and packaging system that produces 50 custom packs/min, with up to eight different tablets/pack.
"At present," the PWC report notes, "the costs and risks of bringing pharmacogenomics technologies in-house do not make financial sense to the larger pharmaceutical companies."
Hurdles aside, it's worth a visit to www.fda.gov/cder/genomics, where you'll read that the "FDA recognizes the importance of pharmacogenomics and encourages its use in drug development."
The agency recently developed an initiative called "Critical Path to Personalized Medicine," to help "identify projects and advance collaborations needed to overcome product development bottlenecks and support personalized medicine."
There will always be a need for high-speed, high-volume packaging machinery, but for manufacturers, now is the time to determine if your packaging operation will be ready to "get personal."
