Using gels and emulsions to make better pills

What is it about?

"Nanosizing" drug crystals is an established approach to improve the performance of orally-delivered hydrophobic drugs by decreasing the size of drug crystals to the nano-scale. However, conventional nanosizing methods are energy-intensive and difficult to optimize. Additionally, combination drug products, which have multiple drugs in the same pill, have many clinical benefits, but are difficult to manufacture. Here, we demonstrate a versatile approach to generate and stabilize drug nanocrystals inside hydrogels. We use two orthogonal gelations to make core-shell hydrogels which can structure distinct drugs in each layer. Our approach enables independently controllable drug loading and release in each layer, suggesting a potentially scalable route for manufacturing combination products of hydrophobic drugs.

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Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We have shown that generating drug nanocrystals from nanoemulsions is a viable and potentially scalable approach. This "bottom-up" route for making drug nanocrystals could represent a paradigm shift from the conventional "top-down" routes used in industry. Our work also demonstrates a new way to make combination drug products that can be adapted for a given drug combination. Finally, our use of orthogonal gelations represents a new way that functional core-shell hydrogels could be manufactured for other applications.

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