Phloral technology combines pH dependency with colonic bug-eating component.
Encap Drug Delivery licensed a colon-targeting drug coating technology from the U.K. University of London’s School of Pharmacy. The company says that this technology called Phloral™ overcomes the problems associated with current colon-targeting systems that rely purely on gut pH to determine where the drug is released.
Encode aims to combine the Phloral technology with its own liquid-dosage technologies to address the additional hurdles associated with trying to deliver solid drug formulations to the colon, which has a low water content. “The ability to use the Phloral technology combined with the flexibility afforded by our liquid-fill hard-capsule technology allows us to now offer clients a system with the confidence that colonic delivery will be achieved,” says Encap CEO, Stephen Brown Ph.D.
U.K.-based Encap specializes in oral drug delivery and pharmaceutical services. The company claims existing colon-targeting delivery systems that rely purely on pH to determine where in the gut a drug is released can be unreliable due to large variations in drug transit times and luminal pH. In contrast, it says, the Phloral technology combines a pH-dependent coating with a component that is broken down specifically by microbiota in the colonic region. Studies published last year suggested dosage units formulated using the combination coating all disintegrated in the colonic area, while others coated exclusively with a commercially available pH coating passed through the gastrointestinal tract without disintegrating.