What Are Apis
About API's
What Are API's
Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are at the very heart of modern medicine, and form the basis for much of the effective and innovative medical treatments. API’s are the biologically active component(s) of a drug product. These component(s) are in most cases a complex combination of various active ingredients/bio-chemical compounds.
Any drug or medication consists of two main components. The first is the API – which is the central ingredient and the second is the excipient, which is the non-active substance which serves as vehicle to convey the API. If drug is in a syrup form, the excipient is the fluid or liquid that has been used to present it in that form.
APIs are generally manufactured through a variety of processes, these include:
- Chemical synthesis
- Fermentation processes
- Recombinant DNA
- Isolation and recovery from natural sources
- A combination of these processes
The purpose of APIs is mainly to cause ‘pharmacological activity or other direct effects in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease or to affect the structure and function of the human body.
There are however certain APIs that are unknown and so require additional substances that work in conjunction with the API to produce the required pharmacological effect. This is very visible in herbal medicines in which the API is frequently a combination of several mixtures and/or substances which when used together causes pharmacological activity on the body. In these situations, the API is not a single substance but the culmination of various active ingredients.
By drawing distinctions between APIs and the drugs themselves, manufacturers are able to specialize their resources and pharmacists are able to align generic equivalents with brand names. This is vital and underpins one of our most defining principles and regulations in modern pharmacy.
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