TruTag, WuXi PharmaTech successfully test edible, on-dose authentication

SHANGHAI and HONOLULU — Testing on an edible on-dose authentication technology developed by TruTag Technologies is showing promising results for its use in combatting counterfeit drugs. 

 

TruTech partnered with WuXi PharmaTech, a research and development capability and development company, to test its technology that can store a drug’s provenance information on individual tablets. The silica, dust particle-sized TruTags act like bar codes that can provide information about where a drug was manufactured and its dosage, as well as supply chain details like lot or batch number. 

 

“One can think of TruTags as a form of edible PIATS, or Product Identification Authentication Tracking System, which can be embedded into a product like unique fingerprints,” TruTag Technologies founder and Chairman Hank Wuh said. “With our ability to securely identify individual goods without labels or packaging, we aim to dramatically improve the safety and traceability of critical products such as food and medicine and in the process to have a fundamental impact on big data.”

 

The testing that WuXi and TruTag completed showed that the technology can be applied to certain solid oral dosage form product without new equipment or changes in the manufacturing process. Tags stay with the tablet and are undetectable except to TruTag’s optical detection device. 

 

“We have demonstrated the ability of our technology to integrate an edible and safe identification code directly into an oral solid drug, thereby indelibly marking the product with an internal code for its lifetime,” TruTag President Kent Mansfield said. “In the near term, this will allow drug manufacturers and distributors to have the ultimate audit of a drug's provenance and origin without reliance on packaging or laboratory chemical analysis.”