Acella Pharmaceuticals announced an exclusive, multi-year, multi-product development and licensing partnership with Catalent Pharma Solutions to develop, manufacture, and commercialize a new portfolio of abuse-deterrent pain relief products leveraging Catalent's OptiGel Lock Technology.
Abuse of prescription opioids is a serious and rapidly growing issue, with ninety-one Americans dying every day from an opioid overdose. Since 1999, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioids and heroin) quadrupled, resulting in more than a half million opioid-related overdose deaths from 2000 to 2015. With these and other statistics surrounding the issues of substance abuse, the parties anticipate an expedited review and approval by the FDA, as this agreement was executed on the heels of the FDA's abuse deterrence initiatives announced on June 13 by FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D.
"OptiGel Lock technology has the potential to limit abuse by incorporating multi-stage levels of prevention," Mr. Julien Meissonnier, Vice President, Science and Technology at Catalent said. "Catalent's OptiGel™ Lock softgel dosage form is inherently resistant to abuse and cannot be ground, blended or crushed, for inhalation or injection."