West Pharma expands Arizona manufacturing facility

Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News staff

The Scottsdale, AZ facility of West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. expanded to meet increased customer demand for the SmartDose Electronic Wearable Injector. 

“Expanding our manufacturing capabilities in Scottsdale – and continuing scaling up production in Israel – will enable rapid, dual sourcing to our customers and help them bring innovative new treatments to market,” says Eric Resnick, president of pharmaceutical delivery systems, proprietary products at West, in a released statement.

Designed to deliver high volumes of injectable drugs over an extended period of time, SmartDose allows patients to self-administer medication, and it encourages compliance with prescribed treatments. West states it has delivered more than 100,000 units of SmartDose and more than 800,000 validated Daikyo Crystal Zenith drug containers to pharmaceutical manufacturers for customer-funded development projects and clinical trials, including eight active programs at various stages of pre-commercial development. 

“Medication adherence is an ongoing challenge in the pharmaceutical industry, and non-adherence is a leading cause of poor clinical outcomes and increased healthcare costs,” Resnick said. “We designed SmartDose to be an easy-to-use, intuitive and reliable drug delivery system that can help boost adherence for injectable medications – and the customer response has been tremendous.”

The expanded capabilities at the Scottsdale expansion include clean room manufacturing and additional laboratory space. New jobs are being created in R&D, engineering, quality, and operations functions to ramp-up production, new development, and sustainment engineering. 

The silicone-free Daikyo Crystal Zenith drug container that is used within SmartDose is commercially available in the ready-to-use format, according to West. 

For more company information, visit http://www.westpharma.com.