FIP Congress 2006
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Jean Curtis reports from a session organised by
the Industrial Pharmacy Section
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 The World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences,
the 66th International FIP Congress, was organised by the International
Pharmaceutical Federation in association with the Federal
Council of Pharmacy of Brazil.
It took place in Salvador da Bahia from August 26 to 31, 2006
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How pharmacy curricula prepare students for a career in the industry
Ziba Ansari-Jaberi, of the Thomas J. Long school of pharmacy and health
sciences (TJL), Stockton, California, presented a comparison of the pharmacy
curriculum in the US and in Iran. The schools of pharmacy chosen were
the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Health Care Services and
the TJL in the US.
Although both courses provide graduates with ample experience to be proficient
pharmacists, significant differences were noted in entry requirements,
programme content and length of time to qualification as a pharmacist.
For
TJL most introductory courses are completed before admission, whereas
for Tehran there is a greater number of basic introductory science courses.
This allows the US course to be shorter — only three years, with
graduates registering typically after about four years — whereas
in Tehran the course leading to qualification as a pharmacist takes six
years.
The course content at TJL produces graduates with a wide knowledge
base who are more clinically orientated but less equipped to take up
non-clinical roles in pharmaceutical industry, whereas that in Tehran
contains industrial pharmacy field work, medicines quality control and
pharmacognosy, all of which enable graduates to enter a career in the
pharmaceutical industry more easily.
Sally Makady, a pharmacy undergraduate at the
German University of Cairo, compared the US (University of Cincinnati),
German and Egyptian (University
of Ain Shams) curricula. Like the previous speaker, she also identified
a difference in entry requirements between the US, the German and Egyptian
universities, with US universities requiring completion of a “pre-pharmacy” programme,
which the German and Egyptian universities do not.
The US programmes
were again identified as producing more clinically oriented graduates.
However, in terms of the industrial component of the curriculum there
was a significant theoretical manufacturing and quality control component
in the Egyptian university but little practical work, a limited amount
of theory and practical work in the US system, but a significant component
of both theory and practice in the German university. The German course
was identified as being closest to the ideal industrial pharmacy curriculum.
Keon Green, a pharmacy intern from Jamaica, presented a comparison
between the courses of the University of Havana, Cuba, and the Purdue
University,
Indiana, US. Like Egypt, Havana devoted part of the course to the theory
of industrial pharmacy practice but for the practical aspects there
is limited access to instruments and equipment. This part of the course
was compulsory, but the much of the industrial course at Purdue was
elective.
It is possible to take an industrial pharmacy course at Purdue, but
this will not allow subsequent registration as a pharmacist.
Courses around the world
Following the presentations, members of the audience were invited by
the chairman to describe the pharmacy undergraduate course in their
countries: • Brazil The pharmacy course contains a core curriculum consisting of
the minimum required for a pharmacist, with elective subjects to be taken
in addition.
• Czech Republic There is a three-year core course then a choice from
community pharmacy, clinical pharmacy or technical (industrial) pharmacy.
• Denmark There is an industrial pharmacy course since 60 per cent of
pharmacists in Denmark work in industry.
• India The government has determined the content of the curriculum,
which is focused towards the industry.
• Arab countries The World Health Organization is working on developing
a common core curriculum for 22 Arab countries (and Afghanistan) through
a study of the curriculum in each country. Wide variations have been
found: whereas Saudi Arabia has an emphasis on clinical studies, in a
number of other countries industrial studies feature prominently.
During the session there was a brief discussion on the reasons for the
differences in the pharmacy courses in different countries. Where more
jobs were available in the pharmaceutical industry the undergraduate
courses tended to have a greater course content applicable to industrial
work. However, in the less affluent countries, equipment and facilities
tend to be limited making practical work more difficult.
The idea of the “ideal industrial pharmacy curriculum” was
discussed briefly. The view was expressed that, since the pharmaceutical
industry is largely organised on a global scale, it might be possible
to devise an internationally harmonised curriculum taking, where possible,
the best from the courses in the various countries. However, the needs
of individual countries would dictate the exact content.
Research presentations by students and young pharmacists
Sunscreens Yasmin
Goman, from the University of Alexandria, Egypt,
demonstrated the potential for chitosan microspheres to be used in
a sunscreen delivery system. Chitosan is a modified carbohydrate
polymer derived from the chitin component of the shells of crustaceans.
She
showed that chitosan has the properties needed for a good sunscreen
delivery system, such as minimal skin penetration, and the ability
to release the active substance in a controlled manner allowing
reduced frequency of application, but in particular that chitosan
itself
has photoprotective properties.
HPLC Lucie Novakova,
of Charles University, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, talked about
three new aspects of high
performance liquid
chromatography (HPLC). She showed that these all have the potential
to reduce time taken to analyse medicinal products during production,
that they meet the quality standards required for analysis of medicinal
products and that they reduce the amounts of solvents used in the
process, thus reducing overall production costs.
Conventional HPLC
columns use small spherical particles of silica. The first new
technique was to replace these particles with a special type of silica
in the
form of one piece of porous monolith material, “monolith columns”.
The second was to replace the conventional particles with very small
particles of around 3.5 microns diameter and the third to use ultra
performance liquid chromatography, which uses high pressure of up
to 100MPa (15,000 PSI) and X-bridge sorbents (bridged ethylsiloxane/silica
hybrid technology) in the columns.
Paracetamol Vladi
Consiglieri, of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil,
described work to find a better method to produce paracetamol tablets.
These are currently manufactured by a wet granulation process, as
pure paracetamol has poor compression and flow characteristics, and
the tablets have a tendency to cap.
The use of direct compression
for tablet production requires paracetamol to be produced in a
special form to improve its compaction properties. The work examined
the
use of paracetamol mixed with various other materials in different
proportions to try to find a suitable mixture for tablet production
by direct compression using conventional raw materials and equipment.
A suitable mixture containing 70 per cent paracetamol has been identified. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal