Setting a Standard

By: Nikki Withers

In contrast to food and beverage packaging, pharmaceutical packaging must, in many cases, be child resistant yet present no difficulty for its intended users – often elderly adults – to open and use properly. In the European Pharmaceutical Review’s Packaging In-Depth Focus, Stephen Wilkins, Chairman of the Child-Safe Packaging Group, discusses the standards that govern child-safe packaging, as well as the importance of ‘ease of opening’ for elderly adults. He shares details of the rigorous testing processes – where both children and adults are subjected to panel testing – and advises how the standards can be used not only for design, but as a competitive advantage tool.

There is also an article written by Andrew Meyers, Global Director of Cold Chain Consultants Ltd, who provides examples from the field – when I spoke to him, he was travelling through North India. He discusses the decision-making process for cold-chain packaging companies and advises how to ensure your product is transported throughout the supply chain correctly.

Also in the latest issue, Torgny Rundlöf and team, from the Swedish Medical Products Agency, have looked at the use of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) for the identification of peptides and proteins in suspected illegal medicinal products, while Juan Antonio Vizcaíno from the European Bioinformatics Institute and Wellcome Trust Genome Campus discusses how open data policies in proteomics are starting to revolutionise the field in the context of mass spectrometry.

If, like me, you are curious about blockchain, I spoke to Bob Celeste, founder of the Centre for Supply Chain Studies, last month who has been exploring the potential use of blockchain technology to address the data-sharing requirements of the DSCSA. His team has tested several models to demonstrate the potential viability of various blockchain solutions for the pharma supply chain.

This edition also includes articles on aseptic containment, legal advice on licensing negotiations and an In-Depth Focus article from near-infrared spectroscopy pioneer Emil W. Ciurczak.

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