| Drug patches in pipeline for diabetes,
depression
By Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Patients with depression and diabetes may
soon join those getting pain relief, birth control hormones and
help quitting smoking through skin patches that can deliver medication
for days at a time.
Advances in technology, the advantages of continuous drug delivery
and rising patient acceptance are helping drive the growth of patches.
Drug makers may also be able to extend patent protection by delivering
an existing drug through the skin. "It gives them a little
bit more opportunity to profit from that drug," said George
Perros, an analyst at Greystone Associates.
Prescription patches were a $5 billion to $8 billion global business
in 2003 -- coming a long way since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
first approved a motion sickness patch in 1979.
The top-selling patch is Duragesic, by Johnson & Johnson, a
narcotic with $1.63 billion in global sales last year.
Other top sellers include Novartis' Nitroderm for the heart pain
of angina, and a number of hormone replacement patches by Novartis
and Aventis, according to Kalorama Information, a market research
company.
The FDA recently gave conditional approval to a depression-treating
patch, expected to launch later this year. The EmSam patch, by Mylan
Laboratories Inc. unit Somerset Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Watson
Pharmaceuticals Inc., is the first patch in the huge antidepressant
market.
SpectRx Inc. is launching a patch this summer that uses tiny needles
to deliver insulin from an attached pump, company spokesman Bill
Wells said. SpectRx is also developing a pumpless patch, he said.
Developing patches for insulin and other large molecules is difficult.
"The skin is a very tough barrier to get through," said
Diane Burgess, a pharmaceutics professor at the University of Connecticut.
Researchers are working on a variety of technologies, including
ultrasound and electrical charges, to force bigger molecules through
the skin. These so-called "active patches" could pave
the way for delivering insulin to diabetics, as well as red-cell
stimulating erythropoietin for anemia patients, without injections.
"The next frontier for transdermal delivery is going to be
ways to get more active substances and larger molecules ... through
the skin," said Greystone's Perros.
Other companies, like Noven, Alza Corporation and Altea Therapeutics,
are also working on making patches thinner, smaller and able to
carry larger doses.
For patients with chronic conditions, patches can replace the need
to take pills every day by providing a steady release of medication
for longer periods of time.
"You don't have to remember if you took your pill. You can
always see your patch," said Noven CEO Robert Strauss. Noven,
in a joint venture with Novartis, makes an estrogen patch the size
of a quarter, called Vivelle-Dot.
Skeptics warn that the convenience could make it easy to forget
to replace a patch, and skin irritation may force some patients
to rotate the patch to different parts of the body.
Some experts say patches are useful only in niche markets and will
never surpass pills. "The public really prefers to take an
oral tablet. That's the easiest thing to do," said Burgess.
Perros expects demand for medicated patches to grow worldwide by
about 11 percent annually through 2007. Kalorama Information estimates
7 percent to 9 percent growth.
"There's going to be a lot more self-medication (and) self-administration
of drugs in the future, especially with chronic conditions,"
said Perros. "You need a way for people to do that ... safely,
conveniently and pretty much on a schedule."
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