Topical dosage forms are difficult to develop and rely on differing drug physicochemical properties and are applied to complex biological membranes that have evolved to keep such xenobiotics out. The global topical market is around $95 billion USD and is forecast to increase by $70 billion USD over next 4-5 years (1), where the dermatology market is a significant segment. Currently, there are approximately 900 new products in development for dermatology, split between small molecules (65%) and biologics (35%) (2).
Here, Marc Brown, Jon Lenn and Charles Evans, from MedPharm, discuss the latest industry innovations, the benefits of automation and mitigating the risk of product failure in the development of topical products.
Innovation
Formulation in topical product development
The level of risk that a company takes largely affects their development strategy. This can vary between the development of prototype formulation (higher risk) or a full market-ready, commercially viable product (lower risk) to be used in initial preclinical/clinical evaluation. Different sizes of companies will base their own level of risk around commercially viability, their target markets, and corporate culture.