AVON — Buderer Drug Co., an Ohio compounding pharmacy, cut the ribbon for its third location on Chester Road on Thursday, bringing in support from as far as Washington, D.C.
The opening of the pharmacy, specializing in the preparation of customized medications for individual patients, brought in the deputy state director of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s office, Elizabeth Thames.
“Buderer are really good corporate citizens and a good business to have in Lorain County — they really, really care about their patients,” Thames said.
As a compounding pharmacy, Buderer pharmacists work closely with doctors and their patients in order to determine the appropriate dosages, strengths in composites that would otherwise be unavailable on the mainstream drug market for patients’ medication.
The senator’s support for compounding pharmaceuticals comes off a national controversy in March in which KV Pharmaceutical acquired the rights to produce the pre-natal compound 17-hydroxy-progesterone (or 17P). Before the drug was acquired by KV Pharmaceutical and sold under the brand name Makena for $1,500 per dose, compounding pharmacies like Buderer provided patients with the drug for a maximum of $20.
In a response this spring, Brown, D-Avon, called for an immediate antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission of the decision to allow the pharmaceutical company to have exclusive rights to the drug.
The Federal Drug Administration made the unusual announcement on March 30 that it would continue to allow pharmacies to produce less-expensive versions of the drug.
“The actual drug itself, we’ve made for a long time, before it was even patented by the larger pharmaceutical company,” said Kenneth Hohmeier, the pharmacy manager at the Avon Buderer. “We continue to make that now.”
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