Dow Wolff Cellulosics (DWC) intensifies its focus on the ingredient formulation and delivery needs of the Pharma market. DWC Pharma will work closely with formulators and manufacturers not only to meet existing needs, but also to drive innovation and new technologies that address emerging and future formulation and delivery challenges.
“Our intention is to forge a new level of relationship with drug formulators and manufacturers, to see how they can use our expertise and know-how to address specific challenges around the delivery mechanisms of the future,” said Lucrece Foufopoulos, Global Marketing Director of DWC. “We’re approaching the market very much as a development partner.”
Dow holds, between DWC and other business units, five of the top 10 excipient technologies. This means that the business units are the face of excipients. “We’re changing the way we act, by getting closer to our customers and becoming a true solutions provider, and the way we think, by making end-user benefits a priority in our product development,“ said Martin Sonntag, General Manager of DWC.
Dow Chemical’s acquisition of Wolff Walsrode in 2007 led to the formation of DWC, which today consists of a Pharma, a Food and an Industrial Specialties business unit. The acquisition of Wolff Walsrode added the CMC product offering and WALOCEL™ polymers to its portfolio, and, importantly, process technology and scale-up capability that significantly increased DWC’s ability to design new solutions.
Today, DWC produces an outstanding range of pharmaceutical ingredients, helping its customers to improve manufacturing processes and delivery solutions. As part of its continuous innovation process, DWC has developed three optimized solutions for today’s cutting edge pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies.
· METHOCEL Premium Direct Compression Grade Hypromellose Polymers – developed to achieve the production economies of Direct Compression (DC) while assuring the multi-functional performance customers expect from this excipient family.
· DWC excipients (POLYOX water-soluble resins, ETHOCEL ethylcellulose ethers and METHOCEL cellulose ethers) – for Hot Melt Extrusion (HME) processing, which reduces processing time and cost, achieves better content uniformity, improves the bio-availability of poorly soluble drugs, and eliminates the need for aqueous processing. With its extensive knowledge base, DWC is able to provide both technological support and guidance on optimal excipient selection and blending to achieve a wide range of performance properties using HME processing.
· METHOCEL Premium Controlled Release products – specifically tailored to the pharmaceutical market for use in Controlled Release (CR) matrix drug delivery systems that increase treatment success rates and improve cost effectiveness. These products have been manufactured for enhanced lot-to-lot consistency in chemical and physical properties that impact drug release performance, resulting in fast development of robust formulations. By working closely with its customers, DWC is able to develop optimal controlled release delivery systems to ensure that active pharmaceutical ingredients are released in the right amount, in the right place and at the right time. In order to deliver on this promise, DWC formed a CR Alliance with Colorcon in 2007. The Alliance offers tremendous value to the pharmaceutical formulator. Dow provides unequaled supply capability and polymer expertise to the Alliance and Colorcon complements with formulation and application expertise, systems and a global technical service network. The companies work jointly in this Alliance on new developments, products, tools, as well as industry supporting initiatives such as QbD.
The continuous development of innovative products arises from DWC’s enormous knowledge base, coupled with Dow’s long history in polymer processing and solvents. This is further supported by DWC’s ongoing investments in the development of new technologies for pharmaceutical processes.
Date: February 2, 2010
Source: Dow Wolff Cellulosics
Filed Under: Drug Discovery