Newswise — As President Obama signs an executive order instructing the Food and Drug Administration to take steps to reduce growing prescription drug shortages, two Temple University pharmaceutical experts are available to discuss the problem.
Magid Abou-Gharbia, Director of Temple’s Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research, spent 26 years as head of drug development for Wyeth.
“This issue of shortage in drugs is much complicated than it look on the surface,” he says. “The solution is not only in the hand of FDA but Congress and Pharma as well.” Abou-Gharbia says that high regulatory hurdles current patent laws, Pharma focusing on developing newer patentable drugs rather than recycling older drugs and Pharma making drugs materials cheaper in Asia are contributing to the problems. “President Obama's directive is much needed and hopefully will guide Congress, FDA and Pharma to work together to overcome these issues.
Albert Wertheimer is a professor and director of Center for Pharmaceutical Health Services Research in Temple’s School of Pharmacy. With experience in both industry and academia, he is an internationally recognized expert in pharmaco-economics
“Obama’s proposal looks great in the newspapers, but it can actually do little or nothing,” says Wertheimer. “The shortages are due, mostly, to globalization and getting a drug to market faster does nothing about this problem.” He says that in the past, a drug manufacturer bought ingredients from local suppliers who bought their materials from one of many sources. Today, everyone buys from the one lowest price source and the other suppliers go out of business or discontinue producing that product when it is no longer profitable. “The maker of the active ingredient buys his materials also from the low bid source. So, as you see, if there is a fire, explosion, labor stoppage, local shipping interruption, or any other problem, the final drug can’t be made due to a lack of some component(s).” And, Wertheimer adds, it’s getting worse since this affects generic drugs even more than new branded ones.
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