Internation a l P h a r m a c eu t i ca l S t u d e nt s ’ Fed e rat i o n
IPSF NEWSLETTER Anti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign
Issue N°83
I nt E ssu er W e fe S N °8 it L Dr ET 3 ug T C a ER m pa ign
IP Co SF u N
An tiInternational Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation
Anti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign
IPSF NEWSLETTER
Summary IPSF Public Health Edition Anti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign Newsletter
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HK plans to “name and shame” fake-drug retailers. The Straits Times. 2010 Dec 30
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Fighting counterfeit drugs with mobile technology. Fast Company. 2010 Dec 6
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Edible optical tags make a stand against counterfeit drugs. Photonics Spectra. 2010
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Award-winning malaria scientist warns of drug resistance. The Globe and Mail. 2010 Oct 25
January 9, 2011
Hello everyone, Happy New Year! I hope the New Year’s festivities were indicative of an excellent year to come. The counterfeit drug world has been experiencing some new changes, so this newsletter will be highlighting a few of the recent advances in technology. In addition, we have had a changing of the guard within the Anti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign (ACDC), so we would like to take this opportunity to introduce the new committee members. If you have any questions concerning the newsletter or ACDC, please contact the ACDC coordinator at counterfeit@ipsf.org. Sincerely,
er e Coop mpaign n ti s i r a Ch Drug C t i e f r e unt 0-11 Anti-Co rdinator 201 Coo HIV/AIDS fighters
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Introduction to the ACDC Subcommittee 20102011
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IPSF NEWSLETTER
ACDC Committee Members 2010-2011 Christine Cooper USA - University of New Mexico
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hat is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): Frinkles – My parents gave me this nickname when I was little and I thought “freckles” was pronounced “frinkles”. It’s stuck since! hat are your duties on the committee?: ACDC Coordinator – Making sure your counterfeit drug information stays up-to-date and gets out to you f you had a superpower, what would it be and why?: I would be able to fly! I travel constantly, and while I’m short, I don’t like the lack of legroom and space in general on planes. Plus, if I could fly, I wouldn’t have to run according to the airline’s schedule; I could just get up and go whenever I wanted.
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Ahmad Mohmmed Muzzmail Sudan - University of Khartoum
HIV/AIDS fighters
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hat is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): Mr. President – I am always a lover of leadership and success in tasks. Classical Arabo is the language I use, which is the language of the official letters in political demonstration. hat are your duties on the committee?: Committee Member f you had a superpower, what would it be and why?: If I had to choose a supernatural power to choose that possessed the power of mind-reading. You have a force that you can easily sweeping the world easily be able to know what it feels like people do. This force cannot err in understanding the one of them when it is not clear, and you can decipher the genuine from the false and hypocritical. No one can fool you then.
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IPSF NEWSLETTER
ACDC Committee Members 2010-2011 Mohammad Kawsar Sharif (Siam) Bangladesh - North South University (NSU)
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hat is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): SIMU (My friends give me this name), MO, hat are your duties on the committee?: Committee Member f you have a superpower, what would it be and why?: I would like to change every bad thing to a good. Stop all the violences, wars etc and make this world a better place for living where love and passion to do good will be well spreaded and hatred and violence will be washed away.
Sandeep Singh India - Dr L.H Hiranandani College of Pharmacy
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hat is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): Aspirin (My friends gave me this name because they feel that I am a pain killer for them) hat are your duties on the committee? Committee Member f you have a superpower, what would it be and why?: I’d want to be able to read minds along with photographic memory (super brain), but only if I could turn it off when I wanted to. I think if I have both the things no one can come in my way of success.
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hat is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): Gina hat are your duties on the committee? Committee Member f you have a superpower, what would it be and why?: that would have to be multitasking :D because I hate to be bored!
HIV/AIDS fighters
Georgina GĂĄl
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IPSF NEWSLETTER
HK Plans to “Name and Shame” Fake-Drug Retailers
HONG KONG - HONG Kong is launching a “name and shame” campaign
HIV/AIDS fighters
http://www.pharmamanufacturing.com/articles/2008/068.html?page=2
against retailers caught selling counterfeit medicine, as the city steps up its crackdown on the mushrooming illicit trade. The financial hub’s customs department said that from early next year it will expose fakedrug purveyors by printing their names in a monthly magazine published by the Hong Kong Consumer Council. The move would help inform the public about fake goods, protect intellectual property rights, and “provide a deterrent effect on those unscrupulous dispensaries”, the customs department said in a statement to AFP on Thursday. “Hong Kong customs accords top priority to handling counterfeit medicines since counterfeit medicines will affect people’s health,” it said. Experts have warned that the trade is ballooning worldwide, particularly on the Internet, with some drugs containing dangerous ingredients including heavy metals such as arsenic and leadbased paints. Hong Kong’s customs agency said it has received hundreds of complaints over the past few years about In Hong Kong markets, Western medicines are always displayed fake pharmaceuticals separately from traditional Chinese medicines. In some shops, herbal and animal ingredients and supplements are displayed openly, where and traditional Chinese packaged pharmaceuticals are generally kept in glass display cases. medicines. – AFP
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Reference: AFP. HK plans to ‹name and shame› fake-drug retailers. The Straits Times[Internet]. 2010 Dec 30 [cited 2011 Jan 9]; Available from: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_619034.html
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Fighting Counterfeit Drugs http://e-phonenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/cell-phone-numbers-made-public.jpg
With Mobile Technology
Counterfeit drugs are a huge problem in Africa and elsewhere. HP and the African social enterprise network mPedigree team up to help ensure patients that the medicine they’re taking will cure them, not harm them. HP and mPedigree, an African social enterprise network, announce today a new program that helps patients in Ghana and Nigeria verify that their medicines are genuine.
HP runs the hosting infrastructure and the security “It’s absolutely imperative that people can trust the authenticity of the drugs they are consuming, systems for the service, out of its data centers in and this system will give them an easy and Frankfurt. Since mobile phones are extremely effective way of doing so,” said Bright Simons, common in Nigeria and Ghana, and becoming more founder of mPedigree. Here’s how so everyday, the system reaches most the system works. Upstream at people at risk. Bright Simons, whose “Counterfeit drugs the pharmaceuticals plant, HP and mPedigree Network has integrated the are estimated to be a many components of the plan, likes to mPedgree’s partners slap a scratch$75-billion-per-year off label containing a verification business, implicated in the speak of building “an infrastructure of code. “We control the printing of the deaths of something like trust.” 700,000 people around codes on the packet,” Paul Ellingstad, “It’s a free service,” says Gabi the world annually” Zedlmayer, HP’s vice president of its HP’s Global Health Director for Social Innovation, tells Fast Company. “It’s Office of Global Social Innovation, a tightly controlled and regulated printing process, funded largely by the pharmaceutical companies protected at all stages.” Downstream at the involved, including May & Baker Nigeria PLC. She pharmacy, the patient buys the medicine, scratches adds that as a cloud-based system, it should be to receive the code, and texts it to verify the drug’s easily scalable. “At the end of the day, it’s all about authenticity. saving people’s lives,” she says. For more details on the service, check out the widget HP put together, below. Reference: Zax D. Fighting counterfeit drugs with mobile technology.Fast Company [Internet]. 2010 Dec 6 [cited 2011 Jan 9]; Available from: http://www.fastcompany.com/1707667/hp-and-mpedigree-fight-counterfeit-drugs
HIV/AIDS fighters
Having malaria is bad enough, without having to worry about whether the drugs that are supposed to cure you may in fact kill you. Counterfeit drugs are estimated to be a $75-billion-per-year business, implicated in the deaths of something like 700,000 people around the world annually. Ten percent of the global drug market may be counterfeit, according to the World Health Organization-and that figure may be close to 25% in developing countries.
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IPSF NEWSLETTER
Edible Optical Tags Make a Stand Against Counterfeit Drugs
HONOLULU
– The global pharmaceutical market is worth $800 billion annually, and approximately 10 percent of this is thought to be counterfeit. Most drug manufacturers employ printed codes or serial numbers, bar codes or hologram stickers on packaging to authenticate their products. But a new optically read microtag that can be applied directly to the surface of the tablet or capsule could provide a more robust solution to combat counterfeiters.
Tablets with TruTags can be verified through blister packs using a portable spectrometer. “On-dose authentication is a relatively new and emerging market that has been developing quietly in the background,” said Mike O’Neill, chief technology officer at TruTag Technologies. “There clearly is an industry need for on-dose authentication because the counterfeiters have figured out how to beat current packaging-level security systems.” The technology, although extremely well suited to the pharmaceutical and supplements industry, also is scalable to applications in a wide variety of markets, including semiconductors, consumer electronics, aircraft parts, medical devices, food and wine, textiles and luxury goods.
HIV/AIDS fighters
Tablets with TruTags can be verified through blister packs using a portable spectrometer.
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TruTag Technologies has developed an edible microtag that reflects a unique spectral light signature that can be measured using a simple, low-cost spectrometer-based optical reader. This means that tablets can be verified through clear packaging without having to be removed from their blister packs.
The microtags contain tiny nanopores, or voids, manufactured to produce the tag’s unique spectral signature. The nano-porous structure can be controlled to affect the localized index of refraction, such that, in effect, the tablets are coated with custommade optical interference filters. The company has controlled the manufacturing process so that up to a trillion unique spectral patterns can be achieved, allowing for an enormous amount of data management flexibility for customers.
IPSF NEWSLETTER
Edible Optical Tags Make a Stand Against Counterfeit Drugs
Because the tags are made from clear, 100 percent silicon dioxide, which has been safely used as an ingredient in food and drugs for decades, they are both edible and biologically inert. The spectral code is etched into a silicon wafer from which microtags are created, and it is converted to silicon dioxide by heat. The resultant microtags, called TruTags, can be associated with information such as product strength, lot number, expiration date, authorized country of sale and authorized customer.
With tablet and capsule manufacturers in mind, the tags are applied via industry-standard pan coaters so that they can be applied to the surface of tablets or mixed into capsule shells during manufacture. The hope is that drugmakers will employ microtags for quality assurance, returns monitoring and in cases where counterfeit product is of concern.
Hundreds of TruTags occupy an area about the size of the head of a pin. Each tag is barely visible to the naked eye. Images courtesy of TruTag Technologies.
“Tampering with either the package or the contents in this scenario would flag a security violation. The microtags can also be used to track placebos versus active dosages in clinical trial programs to ensure data integrity and speed time to market,” O’Neill said.
TruTag Technologies currently is in trials with a major US nutraceutical company and has tested the microtags in a variety of applications both with clear and nominally opaque coatings.
Hundreds of TruTags occupy an area about the size of the head of a pin.
O’Neill said that this pilot partner applied the tags to its tablets without making any changes to its existing manufacturing process and without any effect on the look or feel of the coatings. “We are now in four-corner testing to see how the tagged tablets perform under accelerated shelf life conditions, by applying high heat and humidity,” he added.
Reference: Freebody M. Edible optical tags make a stand against counterfeit drugs. Photonics Spectra [Internet]. 2010 [cited 2011 Jan 9]; Available from: http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=45203
HIV/AIDS fighters
For advanced security, the microtag characteristics can be linked to – and verified by – other information printed on the package, in such a way that the medicine and packaging are authenticated together.
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IPSF NEWSLETTER
Award-Winning Malaria Scientist Warns of Drug Resistance
HIV/AIDS fighters
The WHO’s recommendations might not mean much, however, unless something is done to curb the market for counterfeit artemisinin drugs. These often contain small amounts of artemisinin – not enough to treat the malaria, but enough for the bug to develop resistance. Furthermore, people who take counterfeit artemisinin don’t take the recommended combination of other anti-malarial drugs, which also greatly increases the chance of drug resistance.
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http://www.editionsmondialis.com/2010/11/et-revoila-la-malaria/
The most effective malaria treatment ever discovered was not developed by a team of scientists in a high-tech lab. It was created using a traditional Chinese herbal remedy that had been used to treat illness for hundreds of years. The treatment is made using a compound, artemisinin, isolated from a herb used in traditional Chinese medicine. It is 95 per cent effective at curing malaria, according to the World Health Organization. But Nicholas White, one of the scientists who pioneered the development of artemisinin-based malaria therapies, is warning that growing parasite resistance to the treatment, spurred in large part by the massive marketing of counterfeit versions, could have major consequences down the road – perhaps even making the drug ineffective.
Reference: Weeks C. Award-winning malaria scientist warns of drug resistance. The Globe and Mail [Internet]. 2010 Oct 25 [cited 2011 Jan 9]; Available from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/award-winning-malaria-scientist-warns-of-drug-resistance/article1771762/
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