The technology – which will be sold as SelfDose – was developed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) unit Janssen as a self-injection solution for patients wishing to administer their own pharmaceutical or biologic drugs.
Under the new agreement – financial terms of when were not disclosed – West will be responsible for the development and scale-up of manufacturing processes, as well as for producing commercial supplies of the technology on Janssen’s behalf.
In return, West will be permitted to produce for other customers as part of its injection system portfolio, although specific details were not disclosed.
Strategy
West’s involvement in the development of a self-injection technology fits with comments by CEO Don Morel at Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference earlier this year, who set such systems in the context of efforts to control rising healthcare costs.
“With all the pressure on costs, people are looking at how you can deliver a dose more reliably, more accurately, more effectively, lower cost, but without having the overburdening cost of a doctor deliver it or the nurse practitioner deliver it, you can deliver it yourself and get the dose right.”
How the collaboration with Janssen - which is likely to involve contract manufacturing work - will impact efforts to realign its delivery systems business that Morel also announced at the conference is unclear.
“On the Delivery Systems segment side, this is one of the strategies built wholly upon moving out of contract manufacturing, which is roughly 80 per cent of those revenues into proprietary products.
“Our goal over the next five years is to make that split go from 80-20 in favour of contracts to 50-50, and the way we're going to do that is through the introduction of the number of products that we've been working on over the last five years.
West did not respond to in-Pharmatechnologist.com request for additional information ahead of publication.