Hovione Technology
The Leader in Inhalation Drug Delivery

"Failures are the stepping stones to success,” - this age-old saying perfectly goes with Hovione Technology. When they launched their first inhaler 20 years ago (which was briefly licensed to Ranbaxy), it was not a success owing to the complex structure. The product was also expensive to manufacture and assemble and difficult for patients to use—with six plastic components and five metal ones. Hovione learned their lesson from this and emerged stronger next time with their second inhaler, TwinCaps, which had only two plastic components, and was a big hit in Japan.

From this point onwards, the company kept growing its portfolio, and today has different offerings to ensure high-quality and precision. These include PowdAir, a re-usable capsule-based device with four plastic components; TwinMax, a larger version of TwinCaps to deliver two to three times as much drug; Papillon, a simplest re-usable blister-based device; and 8Shot, which has eight powder compartments for large dose delivery.

Hovione Technology’s team is today competent in all fronts of inhalation devices and offers unparalleled inhaler designing, patenting, and licensing. While working with the company, businesses can access Hovione’s (Hovione Technology’s sister company) 60 years of expertise in active pharmaceutical ingredient development and manufacturing, large industrial capacity, and a stellar GMP compliance record. Hovione also offers the industry’s best technology and capacity in particle design and engineering services and production and can achieve a median particle size within ± 0.1 microns of the desired target. “Our focus is on building bridges of trust and reputation and to be able to deliver high-quality inhalers timely and so, we collaborate with numerous entities for making inhalers market ready,” says Peter Villax, CEO, Hovione Technology. On the design front, the company’s collaboration with the Technology Partnership, TTP, has lasted twenty-five years and continues.

Our focus is on building bridges of trust and reputation and to be able to deliver high-quality inhalers timely and so, we collaborate with numerous entities for making inhalers market ready

On the industrialization front, they have partnered with H&T Presspart, which is their exclusive partner for manufacturing and distributing PowdAir world-wide.

Over the years, the company has gleaned a legion of clients. For instance, in 2005, Daiichi Sankyo approached Hovione Technology to urgently develop laninamivir, a long-acting neuraminidase inhibitor to treat the influenza virus. In a matter of weeks, the technology transfer process started and together both companies went on to develop a formulation for delivery using Flowcaps. However, FlowCaps was not suitable for pandemic use owing to its complexity. Therefore, Hovione Technology decided to invent a new device, TwinCaps, with the first prototype emerging days after the first drawings. While the first clinical trials were held using FlowCaps, the company simultaneously developed TwinCaps as a vitro-equivalent device to FlowCaps in collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo scientists. Supported by very favourable data, the Japanese were able to switch inhalers in the middle of the clinical program, and Inavir TwinCaps was launched in October 2010. Today, it is Japan’s largest-selling drug to prevent and treat the flu.

With such success, Hovione Technology is all set to leave its mark in the current pandemic situation as well. As everybody is aware that COVID-19 is not going anywhere soon, the world will need both vaccines and therapeutics to prevent the disease from progressing to a critical stage. “We are presently involved in two inhaled COVID-19 drug projects with major global institutions and, if the drugs are successful, we are looking at very high volumes, around tens of millions of inhaled doses annually. “Hovione Technology strives to make inhalers as simple as possible to ensure they are easy-to-use, economic to manufacture and assemble, and easier to approve,” concludes Villax.