Anticounterfeiting the Chugai Way: Prevent, Identify, Detect, Act

Continuing our series of articles on the strategic perspectives of leading brands in their fight against counterfeit and adulterated products, this month we feature Chugai Pharmaceutical, one of Japan’s top five pharma companies, and a member of Swiss healthcare multinational Roche.

Like its peers in the industry, Chugai faces increasing counterfeiting issues. In particular, its best-selling drug Actemra, for treating rheumatoid arthritis and severe COVID-19 cases, was targeted by counterfeiters during the pandemic, due to heavy demand for the drug. In addition, the company’s various cancer treatments have also been targeted by counterfeiters.

Chugai therefore decided to intensify its efforts to protect patients and ensure the authenticity of its products, by implementing an anticounterfeit strategy based on six key parameters.

The first parameter relates to the application of tamperproof tape and security holograms on product packaging. While Japan, like many other countries, mandates the use of a serialised traceability code on pharma products, in the form of a 2D datamatrix code, the code alone is not enough to differentiate between counterfeit/adulterated and genuine/intact products.