A prefilled syringe is only as useful as its shelf life allows. Boris Zubry, founder of Avicenna, puts the bar at more than two years. Anything shorter doesn't pay, he says, because a product can spend up to six months travelling through the distribution chain before it reaches a patient. He says that need is still unmet, and whether it gets met will decide how far prefilled syringes spread.
For over a century, injectable drugs have mostly reached hospitals and patients in multi-dose vials, single-dose ampoules and separate syringes. Better manufacturing, preservation, transport and storage (the cold chain included) began to change that, and so did biologics, biosimilars and a growing number of patients who inject at home. The vial format still leads, but Zubry says it is losing ground fast. Dosing errors, air bubbles, low compliance, high disposal costs and limited drug availability are its known weak spots.
Single-use prefilled syringes are moving into that space, especially for protein-based drugs and sustained-release formulations. More than 70 drugs are now sold in them, among them antithrombotic agents, vaccines, blood stimulants, interferons and rheumatoid arthritis treatments. Zubry says more than 4.5 billion were used in 2025. The global market is projected to reach $65 billion by 2035, roughly double its present size.
By Zubry's account, a prefilled syringe usually costs a drugmaker less per dose. It holds exactly the amount to be delivered, whereas vials are typically overfilled by 10% to 25% to cover air bubbles and whatever is lost in preparation. Making, shipping and storing two items (syringe and needle) is cheaper than doing it for three (syringe, needle and vial). Two items also take up less space and weigh less, which counts when medical disposal is charged by weight. Printing and color coding on the syringe and pack help with brand differentiation too.
The biggest savings, he adds, come from moving from small production lots to large ones and running filling machinery the way it was built to run: fast, versatile and with little downtime.
Most prefilled syringes are glass or specialty plastic, built on the traditional plunger and barrel, and the 1.0 ml size is the most popular. Glass is still the standard. It is inert, dimensionally stable, easy to sterilize and transparent enough to inspect, and filling lines are built around it. Specialty plastics can do the job at a higher cost, and plastic syringes have recently appeared to cut the risk of breakage.
Needles are either staked in or attached through a Luer cone or Luer Lock. Staked needles tend to turn up in emergencies where speed matters, while luered syringes are more common for self-administration. Needle-stick safety is still being worked on, with shielded and retractable designs arriving steadily.
Filling happens aseptically. Sterile barrels arrive in nested tubs, are filled in cleanrooms and fitted with sterile plungers, then packaged and fully inspected before they ship.
Because the plunger and barrel design remains, the barrel needs a silicone oil coating so the plunger can glide. Over long storage, that silicone can leach into protein-based drugs. Those drugs can also draw impurities out of the rubber stoppers and plunger pistons, especially when formulated at low or high pH. Manufacturers are working on new coatings and oils, and one idea on the table is to swap rubber for a less reactive material such as Teflon.
Glass has its own problem. Delamination, where microscopic glass debris sheds into the drug over time, is a particular worry at lower pH and has raised questions about pharmaceutical glass quality. It has pushed interest toward cyclic olefin polymers and copolymers (COC, COP and CZ). These look like glass, show low extractability, leachability and protein adsorption, and stay stable across a wide pH range. Their higher cost may slow adoption.
Handling, storage and shipping are the biggest concerns, Zubry says, and stability and shelf life should be checked before anyone commits to the format, because getting it wrong can prove costly.
Avicenna's vacuum-sealed, plungerless design is aimed at these points. Zubry expects it to extend shelf life beyond two years and, once commercialized, to deliver far more than an incremental gain, with openings across the life sciences value chain.
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