TouStar®, Sanofi’s new reusable pen for concentrated Toujeo® insulin, has been recognised with a Pharmapack 2022 Innovation Award for Eco-Design and a Green Good Design Award from Chicago Athenaeum
The prestigious Pharmapack Innovation Awards celebrate the latest innovations within the pharmaceutical packaging, medical devices, health products and veterinary drugs sectors, recognising innovations that improve drug efficacy, user safety or reduced environmental impact.
Green Good Design's goal is to bestow international recognition to those outstanding organisations that have forwarded exceptional thinking and inspired greater progress toward a healthier and more sustainable universe.
Designed with a dedicated replaceable cartridge system, TouStar® is the first reusable injection pen for a concentrated insulin. TouStar® is designed exclusively for Sanofi’s Toujeo® basal insulin cartridges, which contain a concentrated ‘U300’ formula with 50% more insulin than a regular cartridge, making them more convenient, longer lasting and better for the environment. Until now, concentrated insulin has only been sold in disposable pen injectors. This is because of the risk of mixing up a concentrated insulin cartridge with a regular one, which could result in a potentially serious dose error. To prevent users from accidentally attaching incompatible insulin cartridges to TouStar®, a new dedicated cartridge system has been developed which simplifies cartridge exchange and prevents insulin mix-ups from occurring.
By leveraging the potential to deliver concentrated insulin with a reusable pen, it is estimated that TouStar® reduces environmental impact over its device life by approximately 50% compared to equivalent disposable pens, and by even more when comparing with pens containing a regular strength basal insulin. This is due to significantly lower energy and raw material consumption in manufacture and distribution, as well as less waste.
Rob Veasey, DCA’s project leader for the TouStar® development programme, said “It is a real honour that TouStar® has been recognised with two major awards for Eco-Design. To enable delivery of concentrated insulin with a reusable pen injector we had to overcome a range of technical, usability, safety and regulatory challenges. The Sanofi and DCA development team can be very proud of what has been achieved with TouStar®, which demonstrates that more sustainable drug delivery devices can also be really great to use.”
