Grant for Counterfeit Drug Detecting Device

PharmaChk, a portable anticounterfeiting device, has received a $2 million transition-to-scale grant from Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development. PharmaChk is being developed in conjunction with researchers at Boston University (BU) to detect and quantify active ingredients in medicines.

According to the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), the device has the potential to revolutionize how pharmaceutical industry players in the supply chain around the world detect poor-quality drugs. The grant will further the development of the new device and bring it closer to commercial production.

Other methods to screen for substandard or counterfeit products in the field are limited in their ability to quickly and accurately quantify the actual amount of active ingredient in a sample as well as to determine how quickly that active ingredient dissolves so it can work in the body as intended.

In the spring of 2014, the first pilot study using PharmaChk on medicine samples was conducted at USP’s Center for Pharmaceutical Advancement and Training (CePAT) in Accra, Ghana. USP opened CePAT in May 2013 to help expand the number of trained experts and available tools to combat substandard and counterfeit drugs.

“The toll that poor-quality medicines take on global public health-particularly among the most vulnerable populations in the developing world-is staggering, with 99% of all maternal deaths occurring in developing countries,” said Ronald T. Piervincenzi, PhD, chief executive officer of USP, in a press release. “Helping to ensure patient access to good quality drugs-including those used for neonatal care, to fight infectious diseases or to maintain good maternal health-is a leading priority for USP.”

PharmaChk is being developed with support from the PQM program, which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and seed funding from the Saving Lives at Birth partnership. USP works collaboratively with USAID to implement PQM. The Saving Lives at Birth partnership includes USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada), and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. Saving Lives at Birth is a global call for groundbreaking, scalable solutions to prevent infant and maternal deaths around the time of birth and supports a wide variety of work across maternal and neonatal health, family planning, nutrition, and HIV.

Source: USP.org