The drug delivery technology landscape is rapidly evolving with new classes of pharmaceuticals and biologics fuelling this revolution. The last few decades have witnessed the emergence of several drug delivery technologies including hydrogels, liposomes, microparticles, nanoparticles, and polymers. The growth of drug delivery solutions is of increasing importance to pharmaceutical companies, and has resulted in significant changes in the drug delivery landscape.

The future growth projections for these devices are increasing, causing a number of innovative drug delivery systems to be introduced each year.

With significant paradigm shifts in drug discovery and development, the industry is also gearing up to adopt alternative drug delivery strategies in order to further facilitate drug development. Opportunities have significantly increased in the last few years. Pharmaceutical companies are collaborating with drug delivery firms to effectively target patient concerns.

Newer methods, such as transdermal technologies, intelligent delivery systems capable of modulated delivery, nasal delivery and skin-based delivery technologies, have come up. And the change in the outlook of the drug delivery industry is further facilitating a better understanding of market dynamics, encouraging innovation for alternative technologies and giving rise to competition.

The story focuses on the emerging drug delivery landscape in Asia Pacific along with briefly highlights the drug delivery achievements in Asia. The 11 innovative techniques emerging in the Asia Pacific marketplace are:

Auto-injectors: It is a new approach to design painless modes of injectables. Taiwan-based Scandinavian Health (SHL Group) believes that besides having advanced alternative drug delivery technologies, the number of injectable drugs would be substantially large in the future. The company is focusing on auto-injector manufacturing.