IPSF NEWSLETTERAnti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign

Internat ional Pharmaceut ica l Students ’ Federat ion

Issue N°83

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Internat ional Pharmaceut ica l Students ’ Federat ion

Anti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign

Issue N

°83

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,v please contact the ACDC coordinator at counterfeit@ipsf.org.

Sincerely,

Christine Cooper

Anti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign

Coordinator 2010-11

IPSF Public Health EditionAnti-Counterfeit Drug Campaign Newsletter

Summary

2Introduction to the ACDC Subcommittee. 2010-2011

4 HK plans to “name and shame” fake-drug retailers. The Straits Times.

2010 Dec 30

5 Fighting counterfeit drugs with mobile technology. Fast Company.

2010 Dec 6

6 Edible optical tags make a stand against counterfeit drugs.

Photonics Spectra. 2010

8Award-winning malaria scientist warns of drug resistance. The Globe

and Mail. 2010 Oct 25

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Christine Cooper

Ahmad Mohmmed Muzzmail

USA - University of New Mexico

Sudan - University of Khartoum

ACDC Committee Members2010-2011

What 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 has stuck since!

What are your duties on the committee?: ACDC Coordinator – Making sure your

counterfeit drug information stays up-to-date and gets out to you

If 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.

What is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): Mr. President – I have always loved leadership and being sucessful.

Classical Arabo is the language I use, which is the language of the official letters in political demonstration.

What are your duties on the committee? Committee Member

If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?: If I had to choose a supernatural power, it would be mind-reading. You could

easily travel the world and be able to know what other people feel like. This force would help you understand others 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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Mohammad Kawsar Sharif (Siam)

Sandeep Singh

Georgina Gál

Bangladesh - North South University (NSU)

India - Dr L.H Hiranandani College of Pharmacy

ACDC Committee Members2010-2011

What is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): SIMU (My friends give me this name) and MO.

What are your duties on the committee?: Committee Member

If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?: I would like to be able to change every bad thing to a good thing. I would stop all

violence, wars, etc. and make this world a better place to live in where love and passion a passion to do good things would spread and hatred and violence would be washed away.

What 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)

What are your duties on the committee? Committee Member

If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?: I’d want to be able to read minds along as well as having photographic memory

(super brain), but only if I could turn it off when I wanted to. I think if I had both of these powers nothing could come between me and success.

What is your nickname? (Why do you have this nickname?): Gina

What are your duties on the committee? Committee Member

If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?: that would have to be multitasking because I hate to be bored :D!

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HK Plans to “Name and Shame”Fake-Drug Retailers

HONG KONG - HONG Kong is launching a “name and shame” campaign 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 beginning from early next year it will expose fake-drug 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 lead-based paints.

Hong Kong’s customs agency said it has received hundreds of complaints over the past few years about fake pharmaceuticals and traditional Chinese medicines. – AFP

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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In Hong Kong markets, Western medicines are always displayed separately from traditional Chinese medicines. In some shops, herbal and animal ingredients and supplements are displayed openly, where packaged pharmaceuticals are generally kept in glass display cases.

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“It’s absolutely imperative that people can trust the authenticity of the drugs they are consuming, and this system will give them an easy and effective way of doing so,” said Bright Simons, founder of mPedigree. Here’s how the system works. Upstream at the pharmaceuticals plant, HP and mPedgree’s partners place a scratch-off label containing a verification code on the medication containers. “We control the printing of the codes on the packet,” Paul Ellingstad, HP’s Global Health Director for Social Innovation, tells Fast Company. “It’s a tightly controlled and regulated printing process, protected at all stages.” Downstream at the pharmacy, the patient buys the medicine, scratches the label to receive the code, and texts it to verify the drug’s authenticity.

HP runs the hosting infrastructure and the security systems for the service out of its data centers in Frankfurt. Since mobile phones are extremely common in Nigeria and Ghana and becoming more

so everyday, the system reaches most people at risk. Bright Simons, whose mPedigree Network has integrated the many components of the plan, likes to speak of building “an infrastructure of trust.”

“It’s a free service,” says Gabi Zedlmayer, HP’s vice president of its Office of Global Social Innovation,

funded largely by the pharmaceutical companies involved, including May & Baker Nigeria PLC. She adds that as a cloud-based system, it should be easily scalable. “At the end of the day, it’s all about saving people’s lives,” she says.

Fighting Counterfeit DrugsWith Mobile Technology

Counterfeit drugs are a huge problem in Africa and elsewhere. HP and the African social enterprise network today a new program that helps patients in Ghana and Nigeria verify that their medicines are genuine.

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 an estimated 700,000 people around the world annually. Ten percent of the global drug market may be counterfeit. According to the World Health Organization, ten percent of the global drug market may be counterfeit—and that figure may be close to 25% in developing countries.

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“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”

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

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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.

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.

“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.

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 custom-made 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.

Edible Optical Tags Make a StandAgainst Counterfeit Drugs

Tablets with TruTags can be verified through blister packs using a portable spectrometer.

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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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

Edible Optical Tags Make a StandAgainst Counterfeit Drugs

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

Hundreds of TruTags occupy an area about the size of the head of a pin.

Images courtesy of TruTag Technologies

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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 the compound artemisinin, which is isolated from an herb used in traditional Chinese medicine. It is 95 percent effective at curing malaria, according to the World Health Organization. However vNicholas 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.

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.

Malaria Scientist Warns of Drug Resistance

Award-Winning

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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http://ipsf2011.org

International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation

P.O BOX 842002508 AE Den HaagThe Netherlands

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