Lonza Launches Innovaform Accelerator

Global CDMO Lonza recently opened a new facility at its Colmar, France site. The new Innovaform Accelerator will serve as a center of excellence to develop and innovate capsule manufacturing and drug delivery solutions for oral and pulmonary drug delivery.

Oral active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are popular with patients worldwide, but many APIs suffer from solubility and bioavailability issues that limit their absorption in the gastrointestinal tract. Formulation strategies can enhance solubility and absorption, and sometimes encapsulation functionality is required to achieve targeted drug release. This approach is applicable to small molecules, oral peptides, proteins, monoclonal antibodies, and nucleic acid-based therapeutics.

Christian Seufert, President of Capsules and Healthy Ingredients at Lonza, commented: “The Innovaform Innovation and Formulation Accelerator offers a unique solution for drug developers seeking to solve complex dosage form and drug delivery challenges through innovation. This service expansion plays a key role in our commitment to co-innovation with our customers and enables our customers to accelerate development timelines and reduce scale-up and manufacturing costs.”

Lonza’s new facility is equipped with advanced technology platforms and has extensive expertise in formulation and encapsulation. It provides customized capsules using Capsugel Enprotect technology for proof-of-concept evaluations and innovative delivery solutions. Lonza supports formulation development, capsule customization, encapsulation process parameter selection, compatibility studies, controlled release testing and scale-up manufacturing evaluations to meet the unique needs of each API, thereby accelerating market entry for innovative drug products.