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Springboard

Springboard, part of Sanner Group since 2024, is an engineering company that specialises in the design and development of new products and technologies in the field of medtech and drug delivery devices, resolving technical challenges and decreasing time to market.

Associated Companies

Sanner Group

Main Office
Springboard Pro Ltd
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge
CB4 0WS
United Kingdom

Phone / Contact

T: +44 1223 422 273

Articles by Springboard

TRENDS FOR 2026

A new reality is forming as we enter 2026 – it will not be “business as usual”. Geopolitical forces in the largest market for pharmaceuticals, the US, are likely to mean substantial changes. Here, Tom Oakley and Alex Vasiev cover those changes, the incretin juggernaut and the march of technical progress with “minitablet” dispensers, large-volume injectors and dual-chamber devices.

Dr Ethan Miller

SHEAR RELIEF: MINIMISING SHEAR STRESS IN CGT PRODUCTION

Dr Ethan Miller examines the manufacturing of cell and gene therapies where shear stress can impact cells and explores strategies to mitigate such damage, helping to ensure that therapies retain their viability, functionality and therapeutic potency from production through to administration.

AUTOINJECTORS VERSUS ON-BODY SYSTEMS: THE FUTURE OF LARGE-VOLUME DELIVERY

Dr Alex Vasiev and Dr Ethan Miller weigh up the benefits and costs of using on-body injectors versus autoinjectors, discussing delivery, design and patient population variability alongside recent advances in on-body injector development.

Kristien De Clercq

POWDER TO THE PEOPLE: ACCELERATING ACCESS TO LYOPHILISED THERAPIES

Kristien De Clercq and Dr Alex Vasiev discuss the challenges and recent advances in drying and reconstitution technologies, as well as how, while dual-chamber primary packaging offers a potential solution for simplifying reconstitution, it remains underused due to usability concerns and a prevailing industry preference for vial-based lyophilisation over alternative drying methods such as spray drying and powder filling.

INDUSTRIALISATION

Adam Nightingale

CDMOs AS STRATEGIC ENABLERS FOR DEVICE INDUSTRIALISATION

Adam Nightingale explores a multitude of approaches to achieving more efficient and sustainable production of medical devices when partnering with a CDMO, and demonstrates the ways in which these partnerships can offer reduced risk and comply with regulations when streamlining industrialisation.

Kamaal de Silva

SHIELDED THERAPEUTICS: COULD POLYMERIC NANOPARTICLES SAFEGUARD A NEW GENERATION OF INHALED DRUGS?

Kamaal de Silva and Ethan Miller provide an overview of the benefits of polymeric nanoparticles in pulmonary drug delivery and their potential to overcome key challenges in respiratory medicine, while summarising the range of pulmonary delivery devices that could benefit from their use.

GENE THERAPY IN OPHTHALMOLOGY: ADVANCES AND CHALLENGES

Joe Batley and Lorna Barron provide an overview of the latest cutting-edge ophthalmic delivery methods and discuss possible future developments.

DRUG DELIVERY TRENDS FOR 2025

Tom Oakley and Alex Vasiev look back at how the trends anticipated for 2024 played out in reality and look forward to four major trends expected to influence the drug delivery industry in 2025.

INDUSTRIALISATION

THE RISE OF THE NEXT-GEN CDMO: STRATEGIES FOR REDUCING RISK AND TIME TO MARKET

Alex Vasiev discusses how next-generation CDMOs can ensure the successful commercialisation of new combination products by mitigating development risks, accelerating time to market and helping to avoid costly changes late in the development process.

Kamaal de Silva

CLOSING THE LOOP: THE LATEST ON ARTIFICIAL PANCREAS SYSTEMS

Kamaal de Silva looks at the future of closed-loop insulin delivery systems and how the management of Type 1 diabetes is developing in the digital era.

THROUGH THICK AND THIN: MODELLING THE DELIVERY OF NON-NEWTONIAN FORMULATIONS

Alex Vasiev explores the challenges inherent in understanding flow rates in injectable drug delivery when dealing with non-Newtonian fluids, and provides an overview of how to calculate flow rates for power law, Carreau and Cross fluids.

Catriona Eldridge

PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY TARGETS, ONE YEAR ON

Catriona Eldridge, analyses whether the pharmaceutical industry is meeting its targets and doing enough in the fight against climate change.

Dr Ethan Miller

BUBBLE-WRAPPED REMEDIES: HOW LIPID-ENCASED THERAPEUTICS COULD TRANSFORM INHALATION

Ethan Miller and Heather Jameson shed light on some of the intricacies that lipid-encapsulated therapeutics bring to the realm of inhalation therapies, and some considerations on how the type of inhalation device selected may help to mitigate issues around formulation stability and efficient delivery to target cells.

DRUG DELIVERY TRENDS FOR 2024

Tom Oakley and Kamaal de Silva consider how keeping abreast of the latest trends can help the industry predict and prepare for the future and, commenting from Springboard's privileged position at the centre of many of the drug delivery sector’s most exciting developments, discuss the top trends to look out for in 2024.

Kamaal de Silva

FROM CONCEPT TO CURE: MASTERING LIQUID SILICONE RUBBER FOR MEDICAL DEVICE DESIGN

Kamaal de Silva discusses the potential value of liquid silicone rubber in medical device design, including how its processing differs from other elastomers and how the challenges involved in its design and implementation can be overcome with specialist knowledge and experience.

THE END OF THE ROAD FOR pMDIs?

Finn Heraghty and Heather Jameson explore the extent to which the healthcare needs of a population could be covered by the combined use of soft mist inhalers and dry powder inhalers, and discuss the factors that will impact the continued importance of pressurised metered dose inhalers going forward.

“A CHILD IS NOT A SMALL ADULT”: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS IN DEVELOPING DRUG DELIVERY DEVICES FOR CHILDREN

Tom Oakley and Heather Jameson consider the main differences in developing therapies and drug delivery devices for children and babies when compared with adults.

Dr Gabriel Villar

THE NEXT GENERATION OF MICRONEEDLES: HARNESSING A BILLION YEARS OF EVOLUTION

Gabriel Villar and Ethan Miller consider examples of nature’s solutions to four challenges faced by microneedles for drug delivery. For each challenge, the authors explain how a natural organism has tackled it and what lessons may be directly applied to microneedle design.

Dr Ethan Miller

A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES: CHALLENGES & INNOVATIONS IN OPHTHALMIC DRUG DELIVERY

Ethan Miller and Kristien De Clercq discuss recent advancements and current challenges in the field of ophthalmology, including the trend towards preservative-free multidose delivery systems, delivering smaller topical volumes with increased drug efficacy, slow-release injections for delivery to the posterior of the eye and the exciting field of gene therapy.

Dr Heather Jameson

TAKING THE STING OUT OF VACCINES

Heather Jameson, Juliette Ngan and Omar Shah discuss the potential advantages and challenges of intranasal and inhaled vaccines in the context of global respiratory pandemics.

Catriona Eldridge

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?

Catriona Eldridge and Omar Shah discuss the findings of a recent investigative assessment into the environmental impact of healthcare products, and consider whether or not the pharmaceutical industry is doing enough to combat climate change.

ON-BODY DELIVERY SYSTEMS – NEWS AND TRENDS

Tom Oakley discusses the current state of play in the on-body delivery system space, reviews recent milestones and proposes directions for the future.

ARE GOVERNMENTS BANNING THE MOST ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY INHALER?

Rob Udale, Catriona Eldridge and Omar Shah assess the assertion that pMDIs are the most environmentally damaging of the available pulmonary drug delivery device archetypes, and explore some of the intricacies not accounted for in the public discourse surrounding pMDIs.

WAITING WITH BATED BREATH – WHAT’S IN STORE FOR 2022

Rob Udale and Heather Jameson discuss the exciting developments taking place in the design of inhalation devices and share their predictions for the top five inhalation trends to watch as 2022 unfolds, and beyond.

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