Marc Brown
Co-founder, MedPharm
Marc Brown co-founded MedPharm in August 1999, was CSO until 2020, Board Director until 2024, and he remains Chair of MedPharm’s Scientific Advisory Committee. Brown was instrumental in establishing MedPharm’s principles and ethos, and has been a guiding force behind many of its scientific developments, innovations, and intellectual property. To date, he has been involved in the pharmaceutical development of over 60 locally applied medicinal products that are on the market in Europe, America, and Japan. He also acts as CSO to Mosanna Therapeutics AG, supporting the development of sleep apnoea medicine. Whilst advising numerous pharmaceutical companies as an expert witness in patent disputes, Brown’s academic history ranges from the Pharmacy Departments at King’s College London and the University of Hertfordshire, to visiting/honorary professorships at the Universities of Reading, Hertfordshire, and King’s College London. He was awarded the status of Professor Emeritus in 2022 and has co-supervised over 50 PhD students to success, while co-authoring two books, more than 200 publications, 30 book chapters, and 26 patents describing his research interests, which lie mainly in drug delivery to the skin, nails, eyes, and airways.
We asked…
What is the most exciting development or emerging trend in pharma manufacturing today?
Up until five years ago, I would have strongly argued that Alexander Fleming’s 1928 serendipitous discovery that a mold on a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria was producing a self-defense chemical (he named Penicillin) that was preventing growth of the bacteria was the biggest breakthrough for the pharma industry. It is estimated that penicillin alone has saved around 200 million lives, not including the influence of its discovery on the development of other antibiotics.
However, a more recent breakthrough discovery was the development of mRNA vaccines. After decades of research, rather ironically, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the validation of the use of mRNA in the form of vaccines for the treatment of infectious diseases, which has enormous potential. The requirements for light-speed research strengthened interactions among the pharma industry, service providers, logistics, governments, and regulatory authorities. This resulted in the acceleration of marketing authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines, increased knowledge of disease mechanisms, and the potential development of new mRNA-based therapies for infectious diseases, cancer immunotherapies, therapeutic protein replacement therapies, and genetic disease treatment. However, mRNA delivery itself still poses multiple challenges with regard to developing the optimal formulation/delivery system for tissue targeting, cellular uptake and ultimately, the product’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic performance. We still have a lot to learn.
For the future beyond mRNA, the CRISPR genome editing technology is a favorite to be the next best thing. With its pinpoint accuracy and relatively low production costs, CRISPR is an equally exciting development with an application to any disease involving genes: from repairing genetic disorders like sickle cell anemia or hemophilia to the fights against cancer, HIV, and heart disease. Ultimately, if the formulation and delivery challenges can be solved and funding allows for their use, personalized medicine is as close as it has ever been to be the next biggest breakthrough.
What is your most controversial opinion about the field?
As knowledge in molecular biology and genetics grows, the biopharma potential market increases, but so does that for small molecule drugs because of the discovery of new “druggable targets.” I would argue that these two pathways need each other to maintain their growth in the future.
However, a more fundamental challenge to the pharma industry is the drive to improve upon or make good products that have long been on the market. As the industry has grown, its understanding has concomitantly improved – and the lack of safety and optimization of such medicines is focusing minds. Historically used excipients are now classed as unsafe and so the development of 505b2/hybrid generic applications (same drug, strength and route, different composition and equivalent or improved efficacy and safety) are becoming more prevalent; regulators need to encourage such developments rather than asking a compositionally equivalent generic medicines that would never be approved nowadays.
