Combination therapies
Combination therapy or polytherapy is the use of multiple drugs to treat a single disease. Combination therapy may be achieved by giving separate drugs, or, where available, by giving combination drugs, which are dosage forms that contain more than one active ingredient. The expression is also used when eg. the combination of medication and talk therapy is used to treat depression. Polypharmacy, on the other hand, is the use of multiple drugs to treat multiple, separate diseases.
Combination therapy is currently used to treat cancer, HIV/AIDS, malaria, TBC,… A major benefit is the reduction of drug resistance, since it is unlikely that a pathogen or tumor has resistance to multiple drug simultaneously. On the longer term combination therapy results in lower treatment failure rate, lower case-fatality ratios, slower development of resistance and consequently, less money needed for the development of new drugs.
The combination of drugs is not always straightforward. Reasons can be incompatibility, PK interaction, different dosage regimen, different release rates, different solubility.
At SEPS Pharma we are developing specific drug delivery systems in order to meet your needs. This can foresee in an immediate release (IR) for both actives, or a different controlled release (CR) profile. Alternative a dual release profile for a single active is also possible.
- Pellets in capsules
- Co-Extruded systems
- IR+IR
- IR+CR
- CR+CR
- Poorly soluble and soluble drugs