Encap to assess potential of Phloral coating technology
Colon Screen will evaluate potential to formulate drug compounds for oral delivery to the colon
Encap Drug Delivery, a contract manufacturing organisation, is offering a ‘feasibility package’ to assess the potential of its Phloral coating technology as a way to target the release of drugs to the colon.
The technology, developed by the London School of Pharmacy, uses two complimentary mechanisms to transport the drug through the body then release it within the colon.
As well as a pH dependent coating, Phloral also features a resistant starch component that is broken down specifically by the microbiota in the colonic region.
The reliability of the Phloral technology has been demonstrated in a recently published scintigraphic study in healthy volunteers (Ibekwe, Khela, Evans and Basit, Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 28(7):911-6, 2008). Dosage units with the combination coating all disintegrated in the colonic area as desired, whereas many units coated exclusively with a commercially available pH coating passed through the gastrointestinal tract intact and failed to disintegrate.
One of the drawbacks to colonic delivery is the relatively low amount of water that is available for dissolution of dosage forms in this part of the gastrointestinal tract. The combination of a reliable colonic targeting technology and the delivery of drugs in a liquid dosage form using Encap’s liquid fill technologies should provide a significant advance for the oral delivery of a wide range of drugs to the colon, the Livingston, West Lothian firm says.
Encap’s series of studies called Colon Screen will evaluate the potential to use candidate compounds in liquid fill formulations suitable for delivery to the colon. There are four stages to this screening process:
- Prototype formulation evaluation
- Assessment of the stability of the test compound to metabolism by colonic bacteria
- Dissolution testing
- PK study (Optional)
The package of studies will allow companies quickly to test the suitability of delivering their compound to the colon as an oral dosage form, the firm says.
