Amsterdam, 25 October 2017: CPhI Worldwide, organised by UBM, announces the winners of the prestigious 2017 CPhI Pharma Awards during a live gala dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel in Frankfurt. The Awards celebrate and recognise pharmaceutical excellence, and strongly encourage companies that are committed to participate in the growing and evolving pharma industry. 

In the ‘API Development’ category, the winner was Cambrex’s new, efficient synthesis of Ospemifene – which uses standard plant equipment and requires only two synthetic steps and one recrystallization, minimising waste and use of solvents.

Orbis Biosciences was given the ‘Formulation’ award for Orbis’ Optimum® technology for oral drug products, which has the ability to create microcapsules with uniform shell thickness that contain pH responsive polymers for targeted delivery approaches for a broad range of active ingredients.

The ‘Excipients’ award has been presented to Colorcon for the Opadry® QX, Quick and Flexible film coating. This product reduces preparation and production times, and ensures coating process efficiency and cost savings in all types of equipment, from traditional to continuous coating.

MJR PharmJet triumphed in the ‘Manufacturing Technology and Equipment’ category with the MicroJet Reactor technology, making it possible to produce of a wide range of particle sizes with combination of process parameters from 10 nm up to 20 µm.

In the category of ‘Bioprocessing’, Capsugel was successful with the Modular Automated Sampling Technology (MAST™) platform. MAST™ allows direct transfer of aseptically collected bioreactor samples to analytical devices, providing rapid, reliable data for superior bioprocess guidance.

1CryoBio was granted the ‘Analysis, Testing, and Quality Control’ award for FlexiQuot®, the world’s first dividable cryotube, which is revolutionising sample collection, storage and handling for liquid sample long term storage products.

Out of over 20 entries, Perlen was triumphant in the ‘Drug Delivery Devices’ category with its Single Use Inhaler (DPI) Perlamed-BLISTair (R).

The SideActuationDevice by Aero Pump won in the category ‘Packaging’ for its metered dosing pump, which ensures a strict dose accuracy over the whole life cycle of the product, only one defined drop per actuation, independent of the filling volume of the bottle.

The award for ‘Supply Chain, Logistics, and Distribution’ has been given to TraceLink for its series of real-time information sharing applications to connect the entire pharmaceutical supply chain on an interoperable network, facilitating a new era of real-time information sharing that will transform how the industry provides care to patients.

Crystec was granted the ‘Contract Services and Outsourcing’ award for its modified supercritical anti-solvent (mSAS) technology, a single-step, high yielding and readily scalable process to generate dry, free flowing particles, designed to meet a target product profile and optimise drug delivery.

Piramal Pharma Solutions was selected as the winner in the ‘Regulatory Procedures and Compliance’ award category thanks to its unique approach to meeting and exceeding global regulatory standards. One approach unique to Piramal is to take the best learnings from other industries and apply these to the pharmaceutical industry. The company is very customer focussed and has introduced new quality improvement tools including QUEST, an organisation-wide ownership campaign, with perpetual audit readiness at sites maintained though tools such as vSENSOR and vPREDICT. 

Pharma5 achieved the award for ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ for its Hepatitis project in Morocco. After the success of the new generation drug against Hepatitis C, Pharma5 is now launching the first treatment of Hepatitis B in Morocco.

Richard Chin, MD, the founder and CEO of Kindred Biosciences, has been awarded the prestigious ‘CEO of the Year’ award. KindredBio is a biopharmaceutical company focused on saving and improving the lives of pets.

BenevolentAI, the global leader in the development and application of AI for scientific innovation, has been granted the award for ‘Pharma Company of the Year (SME)’. BenevolentAI has proven its technology by applying it to human biology and has made significant progress in accelerating drug development, particularly in reference to ALS.

AptarGroup’s internal Landfill Free certification program has been selected as the winner of the ‘Sustainability Initiative of the Year’ category for promoting process efficiencies and the conservation of natural resources in a global setting. 

RACHANA OVERSEAS INC. was awarded in the ‘Excellence in Pharma: Export Promotion’ category, while Pronova emerged as the winner of the ‘OTC’ category. 

Within ‘Patient Centricity’, ERT was victorious with the innovative digital health network, TARGET My Hives, which helps patients actively take control of their condition through stronger engagement with physicians, patient association groups and others affected by chronic urticaria.

Recognised for its expertise in device R&D, Biocorp received the ‘IT, mHealth & Digitilisation’ award. Biocorp has incorporated software development capacities to develop connected drug delivery systems, and a range of add-ons and smart sensors for existing drug delivery devices.

Tara Dougal, Acting Head of Content – Pharma at UBM EMEA, added: “The staggering number of entries for this year’s CPhI Pharma Awards was a surprise to everyone, and the judges worked diligently to assess each individual submission on its own merit. As a result of the growing appreciation for the overall prestige and value of the award, we had to great new categories to fully cover the bredth of attendee innovations at CPhI Worldwide. 

The judges commented that this year we had an extremely high standard of entry and all of the finalists would have been worthy winners. So on behalf of CPhI Worldwide and UBM, I would like to commend all of the finalists and offer my warmest congratulations to this year’s outstanding winners.” 

For more information on the CPhI Pharma Awards or to book a table, please visit: http://awards.cphi.com/