Nélio Drumond

Takeda, Germany

Title: Better medicines for special patient populations: Leveraging human characteristics and dosage form designs

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Biography

Nélio Drumond is a PharmD by training with a PhD in Patient-Centric Drug Product Design. He shares several years of experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry providing scientific leadership to govern the formulation and manufacturing aspects of drug product development projects during clinical stages, including their scalability and validation for commercial use. Currently, Dr. Drumond is responsible for the oversight of commercial manufacturing activities conducted at different Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMOs) within the European region for a portfolio of Takeda products. 

Abstract

Oral drug administration provided as solid oral dosage forms (SODF) remains the major route of drug therapy in primary and secondary care. There is clear evidence for a growing number of clinically relevant swallowing issues (e.g., dysphagia) in the older patient population, especially when considering the multimorbid, frail, and polymedicated patients. Swallowing impairments have a negative impact on SODF administration, which leads to poor adherence and inappropriate alterations (e.g., crushing, splitting). Different strategies have been proposed over the years in order to enhance the swallowing experience with SODF, by using conventional administration techniques or applying swallowing aids and devices. Nevertheless, new formulation designs must be considered by implementing a patient centric approach in order to efficiently improve SODF administration by older patient populations. Together with appropriate SODF size reductions, innovative film coating materials that can be applied to SODF and provide swallowing safety and efficacy with little effort being required by the patients are still needed. Scientific evidence demonstrating the benefits of given SODF coating materials in the concerned patient populations are still very limited. Consequently, the availability for safe, effective, and clinically proven solutions to address the increasing prevalence of swallowing issues in the older patient population is still limited.