Tehran, YJC. Iran has become the second greatest country in slow drug technology, following the US.
Researchers had conducted projects to develop slow drug
delivery technology, thus helping patients in need of daily injection of drugs
through providing their body tissues with amounts of drug enough for 3 months
using the technology, Mehr News Agency reports.
The ‘grand plan,’ as researchers called the project,
launched by the Center for National Grand Plans of the President’s Science and
Technology deputy, allows patients in need of repeated injections of drugs with
the advantage of delivery of drugs in one single injection. The plan eliminates
the frequent referrals to hospitals to do injections, thus ruling out the
incurring costs of the referrals.
Dr. Hamid Mobedi, of Iran Polymer and Petrochemical
Institute, the project director told Iran’s state news agency IRNA that the
technology had been successfully tested in human and animal samples before
getting permission. "The technology was unveiled by Ahmadinejad, then the
president, and the Health Ministry issued the permit to be produced inside
Iran,” he said. "Before the technology had been launched in Iran, the
technology was imported to Iran with an annual cost of $25 million; now, the
project meets the domestic demands, and we have an eye on exports,” said the
project manager.
"We have meetings with the Ministry of Health to limit the
imports of the technology to boost the domestic production and export,” he
added.
Dr. Mobedi also said that an assembly line of the slow drug
delivery technology would be installed in the Technology Park of the
President’s Science and Technology deputy according to the latest EU standards,
which he believed would be among the best 10 assembly lines of the country in
pharmaceutical industry. However, he said that to find footholds in global
markets, "we need investments and support from private and public sectors.”
"The assembly line would provide jobs for 42 people and many
other positions in downstream related industries,” he added.