Coc application in pharmaceutical packaging

In the field of medicine, the "Drug Delivery System" (DDS) is a particularly fast-growing part. In France, the annual increase in this area is about 24%, while the entire pharmaceutical market is only 8%. These are several reasons why drug delivery systems attract the attention of patients and drug suppliers.

One of the key drivers is that more and more patients take medications themselves and need to be reminded by user-friendly and reliable management forms. Packaging is increasingly developed as a dispensing system ("unit dose"). In the case of a needleless injection system, the patient can rely on an accurately determined dose to ingest himself without fear of the needle. In many cases, the packaging system also has the function of transmitting information to facilitate the use of drugs and improve consumer acceptance of drugs.

At the same time, this type of innovative packaging and dispensing system provides manufacturers with the opportunity to differentiate their products from those of their competitors by providing specific value; this is an important factor for pharmaceutical manufacturers. On the other hand, once their patents expire, they will face fierce competition from genetic drug manufacturers. Convinced that the new forms of management are providing an opportunity to improve the treatment based on existing drugs, thereby extending the life cycle of the aforementioned dispensing.

"Fill at any time" simplifies the packaging process

The new form of packaging is made of plastic rather than glass for three reasons: safety, cost, and design freedom.

From a safety standpoint, plastics greatly reduce the risk of breakage, which greatly reduces the risk of injury and infection.

From a cost perspective, the concept of “filling at any time” is particularly advantageous for pharmaceutical companies. They include packages supplied in the form of sterilisation, which allows pharmaceutical companies to greatly simplify their packaging processes, as previously required cleaning and sterilization operations can no longer be needed at the same time. This economic advantage is very attractive: through the use of plastics, workshops, labor and maintenance costs are lower, space requirements are less, planning is simpler, and the danger of cracking is significantly reduced.

A plastic that is particularly suitable for common packaging in the medical field is COC (cyclo-olefin copolymer). The common packaging is packaging that comes into direct contact with the drug. It needs to protect the drug from harmful environmental influences and must not react with the drug. In addition to its high transparency and burst strength, the special barrier to moisture makes COC a candidate material for pharmaceutical packaging. The high transparency and excellent non-rejection of this material are other important features. Typical uses include small bottles, prefillable syringes and other dispensing systems, and blister packs.

Disposable syringe benefits

Prefillable syringes are a prime example of a drug delivery system developed from packaging. The drug is delivered directly to the syringe rather than filling the vial and the contents are then drawn into the syringe.

Injection is still the best form of treatment for a large number of diseases because it is the only way that high-concentration drugs can act on the human body with rapid and highly selective effects. However, the cost of injection is relatively high compared to oral medications and there is a higher risk of infection.

Regardless of these backgrounds, pre-filled syringes provide lasting benefits for all those involved, such as pharmacists, doctors, and patients. If the medication is contained in a single container, a single syringe is not needed. This means that less material is used, and the time saved by the immediate use of drugs can save lives even in emergencies. Also, these syringes can be filled with a high degree of precision at the time of production, with greater accuracy than manual dispensing. Cross-infection caused by reopened bottles can also be prevented by this method.

Correspondingly, pharmaceutical companies are improving their products and, through the above-mentioned filling process, they can save on padding. Although the cost of the pre-sterilization syringe is higher than that of the non-sterilized one, the cost of completing the entire process is much smaller.

The special performance of the COC's water vapor barrier is also the main reason why the manufacturer Becton Dickinson chose this material for its Bactec MGIT 960 tuberculosis diagnostic system (Figure 2). This system is used to detect "Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (TB)": Specimens are incubated in a small, transparent container for a period of one to two weeks. A 365-nm fluorescence sensor can control bacterial growth. In the next one to two weeks, TB diagnosis can be performed in this way. Compared to this, other methods must take three weeks.

One challenge of this use is the longevity of the incubation slides in specimen tubes. The slow disappearance of moisture through the vessel wall will severely compromise the storage capacity of the ready-to-use tube. The very low water vapor permeability of the COC used makes it a suitable material to replace the glass that has been used to date. The higher burst strength also significantly reduces the risk of biological contamination. The COC is also transparent at the wavelength of the fluorescent light used and can withstand the one-time sterilization required by the autoclave.

No fear of needles

Another development area of ​​the "drug delivery system" is the needle-free injection device. Many patients are afraid of needle injections, and needle-free injection equipment can increase the acceptability of treatment. Therefore, pharmaceutical manufacturers can increase their market share by supplying drugs in the form of needle-free DDS. The growing patient self-management of the drug market also promotes the increase in the share of manufacturers.

British company Weston Pharmaceuticals has developed a disposable syringe that can inject the required dose into the skin in less than half a second. It uses a gas drive spring as its drive. The first generation of such devices used capsules made of borosilicate glass to store and administer drugs. The COC is now also used in the second generation to make production simpler and cheaper (Figure 3). Other related advantages are lighter weight and higher water vapor barriers that are suitable for sterilization under all standard methods, including high-energy radiation.

Water vapor blister packaging

Blister packs are now a common form of pharmaceutical packaging and have largely replaced traditional glass or plastic bottles. The advantages are obvious: the reliable protection of the drug is not affected by external influences, even if the package has been opened, the remaining tablets can be protected, the identification is easy, the individual tablets are easy to take out, and the medicine can be dispensed as easily as a medical professional.

The key factor here is that the plastic film and the aluminum surface protect the drug. The film should be as transparent as possible, but it must also protect the tablet from moisture and protect a large number of sensitive drugs from oxygen. For this reason, manufacturers are increasingly using high-grade engineering plastics, particularly COC, which has a well-known water vapor barrier (Figure 4). This material has a high level of moisture resistance so that the drug can be supplied to countries where the climate is hot and humid without any deep protective measures.

Topas 8007 is a special grade COC product with a low glass transition temperature (Tg) that is particularly advantageous for blister packaging. The low Tg makes it possible to process this material at low molding temperatures, and the cycle time of the foaming machine is short, making the process particularly cost-effective.

Prospects

It is not only the quality of the product that determines the degree of acceptance of the product and the breadth of its use, but also the range of designs and functions offered by the product packaging. This is why the "drug delivery system" will remain the main topic of the pharmaceutical market in the next few years. Plastics like COC provide material properties that play a decisive role and will continue to make significant contributions to the development of new packaging systems and further development of existing systems.

Although COC is still at its infancy as a market product, its superior overall performance can be adapted to many fields, especially medical fields and optical storage materials. Because of its high purity, blood compatibility, and the ability to be sterilized and sterilized by common methods, it has found wide application in medicine, such as transparent packaging equipment for liquids and solid drugs, syringes, and laboratory utensils.

COC is also used for cosmetics and food packaging

Similar benefits of COC apply to the packaging of body care products or foods, where ever-increasing applications are also composed of COC materials. Body care products require non-biological repellency, the ability to resist environmental influences, simple labeling methods, and low-cost processing. By utilizing blister packs, they are increasingly divided into sections.

For food packaging, manufacturers not only like the various features already described, but also appreciate the mechanical performance advantages of COC, including good dimensional stability and puncture resistance, good sealability and hardness. For example, Germany's EK-Pack produces COC film for food packaging, and the United States New England Extrusion Company uses COC to improve the hardness, transparency, sealability, and sliding properties of its LDPE-based Inflex series of packaging films.