Biodegradable long acting injectables and implants: an industry prospective

31 octobre 2025, CMU room B04.1414

Dr. Farshad Ramazani, Senior expert science and technology, Novartis Pharma AG

Imagine a world where patients no longer need to remember to take their daily medications. A world where a single injection can provide therapeutic effects for weeks, months, or even years. This is not science fiction; this is the promise of long acting injectables and implants (LAIs).

Long acting injectables and implants (LAI) are known to improve patient adherence and treatment outcomes. They reduce costs for the healthcare system and ensure sustainable sales for pharmaceutical companies. LAI are usually administered intramuscularly (IM) or subcutaneously (SC). In this way, the drug is released from its depot in a controlled manner over a longer period of time (e.g., a few days to a year). There is a trend toward increasing interest in the development of long-acting drugs for local administration versus systemic administration of depot products (i.e., IM or SC injection).

This is leading to finding new ways of administration of the depot formulation, intra-ocular, intra-articular, peri-tendon etc. Therefore, it is expected that more drugs based on LAI formulations will enter the clinical phase in the future. Due to many benefits in adherence, efficacy, and safety of the treatment up until now around 50 brand name medicines using different biodegradable long-acting technology have received FDA approval. Manufacturing of LAI involves many steps with their unique challenges, which is why pharmaceutical companies consider them to be complex formulations to develop. Most of the published papers and books in this field are written by scientists who never worked in industry and whose knowledge on the topic is limited to small scale formulation screening.

Therefore, this course aims to address the challenges of the development of biodegradable LAI from an industrial perspective. Several different LAI technologies including PLGA microparticles, nano and microcrystal suspensions, preformed and in situ forming implants and oil-based formulations will be presented. In addition, clinical application of LAIs for the management of chronic disease using systemic or local drug delivery will be discussed.

Reference:

Biodegradable Long Acting Injectables and Implants: An Industry View | SpringerLink edited by Farshad Ramazani

UNIGE, CMU, room B04.1414

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