SCOLR aims for multiple drugs from one tablet
adapted to deliver multiple drugs in a nod towards a growing trend
in the pharmaceutical industry to develop combination products in a
single tablet.
SCOLR has just filed an application with the US Patent Office for the technology - dubbed the Asymmetrical Multiple Layered Tablet for Controlled Release.
The technology is an extension of the company's CDT technology platform that was developed to deliver active ingredients directly into the colon. The new version is designed to work with single or multiple active ingredients, allowing them to be programmed for release at pre-selected rates and/or at pre-selected regions within the body.
SCOLR developed the CDT platform in collaboration with Dr Reza Fassihi, professor of biopharmaceutics and industrial pharmacy at Temple University School of Pharmacy in the US.
"The medical and pharmaceutical communities are seeing increasing opportunities and benefits from the ability to deliver combinations of two or more drugs - to improve the therapeutic response, enhance safety and reduce side effects," according to Stephen Turner, SCOLR's chief technical officer.
"This newest technology, when added to our low cost, simple-to-manufacture CDT platform, will substantially broaden our reach by expanding and enhancing our ability to work with cocktail therapies, combination drugs and compounds that are considered difficult or impossible to formulate in other drug delivery systems," he said.
Companies have turned to co-formulating drugs in the same tablet or capsule in order to reduce the number of pills a patient has to take and, hopefully, increase patient compliance with therapy. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration has just implemented a programme to increase R&D into combination tablets for HIV, where compliance with therapy is critical to retain its effectiveness and stop resistant strains of the virus developing.
Meanwhile, Schering-Plough and Merck & Co received approval last year for a single-dose combination product for cholesterol lowering, called Vytorin in the US and Inegy in Europe, to improve the ability of patients to reach their cholesterol targets.
The drug combines S-P's Zetia (ezetimibe) with Merck's Zocor (simvastatin) and is tipped to achieve sales in excess of $1 billion (€823m), according to analysts.
