Robust By Design – How BD Is Overcoming The Biologics Challenge In Drug Delivery

By Lionel Maritan and Karima Yadi

The ability to deliver biologics via subcutaneous injection has transformed patient management of a wide range of conditions. It offers patients greater flexibility with home injections and provided considerable savings for healthcare systems. Autoinjectors used with pre-fillable syringes offer multiple benefits, from providing an accurate dosage to the reduction of needlestick injuries as needles are protected after use.

BD is developing a 2.25 mL dose volume fully integrated autoinjector with BD Neopak™ XtraFlow™ - BD’s latest pre-fillable glass-based syringe technology featuring an 8 mm needle with ultra-thin wall cannula technology. The BD Intevia™ autoinjector has recently received the Frost & Sullivan Global 2020 Technology Innovation Award in the autoinjector drug delivery device category. Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognise accomplishments in innovation and disruptive technologies.

BD designed autoinjectors that can deliver drugs of differing viscosities in a well-integrated robust system. Pharmaceutical companies can adapt BD Intevia™ to deliver a range of drug volumes and viscosities without any need for customization of the system itself or of its components. BD recently launched BD Intevia™ 1 mL, capable of managing viscosity up to 35cP, and is currently developing a 2.25 mL version, capable of managing viscosity up to 40cP. BD Intevia™ 2.25 mL is designed as a patient-centric device, reliably integrated with BD Neopak™ XtraFlow™ prefillable syringes which offers a shorter needle (8 mm) with ultra-thin wall (UTW) needle technology. This XtraFlow™ technology increases the inner diameter of the needle by reducing the thickness of the needle wall without having to increase the external diameter with the aim of enhancing user injection experience and comfort while delivering viscous drugs.¹

Both BD Intevia 1 mL and 2.25 mL platforms offer potential for significant cost savings for pharmaceutical manufacturers because major de-risking development process activities such as pre-clinical, clinical and human factor studies are conducted to confirm device maturity.² Device manufacturers need to ensure a high compatibility between biotech drug, primary container, and secondary packaging.3 The objective is to minimise and prevent issues that pharmaceutical companies could encounter during combination product development stages which might affect time to market and development costs.²