Personalised medicines: More tailored drugs, more tailored delivery

Personalised dosing: Printing a dose of one’s own medicine

“…This view of personalised medicine is often criticised for being narrow and not providing a holistic view because it excludes aspects such as delivery of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) (Møldrup, 2009;Fierz, 2004). Indeed, it has been speculated that the benefits from developments of diagnostic and molecular biology might be lost unless more means of personalised medicine delivery are developed (Florence and Lee, 2011). Such development will require new methods of manufacture, capable of producing products in small numbers.…”

“…Crommelin et al (2011) define personalised medicines and note that such therapies are distinct from mass-oriented delivery systems. Florence and Lee (2011) also argue that personalised medicine must mean more than simply new drugs matched to the genetic profiles of patients; rather it should include an enhanced method of delivery of these drugs to patients and patient groups. In essence, therefore, personalised medicine covers all aspects of treatments meaning individualised dosing delivery systems are important components.…”

“…Dosing requirements change due to the fast changes in physiological and metabolic functions in the former and GI pathologies, body fat and renal clearance changes in the latter (Florence, 2010). In the case of the elderly, personalisation is further complicated with polypharmacy and co-morbidities; patients aged 65 years or more take on average 13 medicines and as many as 28 (Florence and Lee, 2011). This further emphasises the need for strict dose control, to reduce the potential for interactions and ensure effective treatment.…”

Personalised medicines

“…In the present issue we publish several contributions which reflect some of the other issues discussed. There are two commentaries, one by Sadee (2011) on the genomic aspects of personalised medicine, one from ourselves (Florence and Lee, 2011) and papers from Friere et al (2011), Crommelin et al (2011, Knibbe and Danhof (2011). We trust that these are the precursor of many more, hence the call for papers below.…”

How The Science Of Personalized Medicines Will Change The Clinical Management Of Patients In The Pharmacy

“…Dose forms will be designed for individual patients, taking into account the appropriate drug dosing regimen and drug combinations suitable for some but not for all. On site, tailored formulations might also be fabricated using this technology, where oral dose forms with variable polymer content have been used to provide controlled release to order [7,8]. The development of intelligent dose forms is now the leading edge of the field of Pharmaceutics, where a new take on traditional controlled release formulations is the to use advances in nanotechnology to develop systems where drug release may be activated in certain tissue-specific or physiological conditions, which will overcome the problem of inter and intra-patient heterogeneity.…”