PBN Manufacturing Awards 2021
Emerging Manufacturer: Vitae Industries Inc.
Vitae Industries Inc. works to promote efficiency in pharmacies with the assistance of its AutoCompounder product.
Drug compounding refers to “the process of combining, mixing or altering ingredients to create a medication tailored to the needs of an individual patient,” according to the Food and Drug Administration.
“Right now, most prescription medicines are one or a few sizes fits all, and while that might be right for some people, it’s also wrong for a large segment of the population,” said Daniel DeCiccio, co-founder and director of operations for the Providence-based manufacturer.
An example of this is the drug Ambien, which DeCiccio said was approved in the early 1990s and the FDA said there’s no gender bias, recommending both men and women should start at about 10 milligrams.
“And the problem is if you have a man and a woman of the same height, age, you control for every variable but gender, she gets two and a half times the amount of drug per that pill that he gets,” DeCiccio said. “It sends 5,000 women a year to the ER and more than doubled a woman’s mortality rate by simply taking the prescribed amount.”
Jeanine Sinanan-Singh, Vitae’s co-founder and CEO, said she was shocked that no one was tackling the problem.
“And as a result, we’ve been the first to market and there’s not really a better option available to these pharmacies to help improve this process to scale to personalized medications,” she said.
Personalized medication is the way forward for many drugs, including pediatric medications and hormone replacement therapies. The AutoCompounder helps pharmacists make individualized medications faster by automating the process of individualization.
“We wanted to take our backgrounds in computer science … and bioengineering … and bring those insights into the manual practice of making individualized medications for patients,” DeCiccio said. “When you talk about emerging, it’s emerging for us because we’re creating a high-quality production environment in a box that can function in a pharmacy or at a point of care.”
After a doctor forms the prescribed dosage through testing the patient, a pharmacist will program the AutoCompounder to create the actual dose. The 3D printer will print the dosage in the form of gummies, lozenges, suppositories or capsules, depending on the medication.
After assembling a team to test the prototype AutoCompounder from 2016-2018, Vitae began to sell it through trade shows and on-site visits in 2019. While the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult and a challenge for everyone, DeCiccio noted that pharmacies have increasingly turned to automation as demand increased.
“We’ve been doing our best to serve our customers, but little steps, I think, go a long way too,” DeCiccio said, “making sure we maintain social distancing in the office, making sure our supply chain is robust and won’t shut down because of the pandemic.”
Vitae has AutoCompounders in over 13,000 compound pharmacies in more than 15 states, including Rhode Island. Compound pharmacies personalize medications for their patients.
DeCiccio said Vitae is looking to continue its expansion and capitalize on the momentum built over the past few years.
“We see ourselves as the first one to provide personal, safe, affordable medications at the point of care. So, we see ourselves building off what we’ve learned over the past few years,” he said. “It took a lot of research in this industry, learning about our customers’ workflow, their needs, patient needs along the way, making sure we have a product addressing those needs.”
Among the obstacles Vitae has overcome is funding. DeCiccio said the company has received both grant funding and private investing, including from the state of Rhode Island and the National Institutes of Health.
“It was a year of great change, and we met that change and we’ve been working with our customers to help get the right drugs to patients during this crazy time,” DeCiccio said. “When you really look at it, prescriptions should be personalized for patients. You get better outcomes, better patient satisfaction.”
