Novel polymer to help oral medications reach the bloodstream

04-Sep-13

Virginia Tech, Purdue researchers have developed a novel polymer that helps oral medications reach the bloodstream. All too often, when a person takes a pill full of a potent and effective drug, the drug passes straight through the body, not reaching the organ where it is needed — a waste of money and inconvenient if it is a cold medicine, but potentially dire if it is a treatment for a serious illness. In a special edition of Carbohydrate Polymers, they introduced an all-natural polymer that can be used with a range of medicines to prevent crystallization during transport and storage; it then traverses the digestive tract until the still fully potent medicine is released from the polymer in the small intestine, where it is best absorbed into the bloodstream. Many medicines locked into crystals don't dissolve fast enough to work properly. If that happens, they can't reach their target. Polymers are introduced to interfere with crystallization. "But the polymers that are presently FDA approved are not effective in meeting all the challenges," said Edgar. "They may prevent a process called nucleation but not stop growth of the crystal if it gets started. Or they may not continue to work after a period of time or if conditions are too hot or too damp. We needed to design a better polymer." The Virginia Tech and Purdue groups have discovered that the effective design for pharmaceutical applications is cellulose omega-carboxyesters, which are cellulose esters that the researchers have enhanced with acids that already occur in the human body.