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Home Market News New enteric coating for solid dosage forms offers hope for patients with ulcerative colitis
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20 Nov 2016

New enteric coating for solid dosage forms offers hope for patients with ulcerative colitis

The OPTICORE coating technology allows targeted drug release in the large intestine to improve local and/or systemic drug bioavailability.

Tillotts Pharma (Switzerland) has introduced a new advanced enteric coating for solid dosage forms at this year's annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. The OPTICORE coating technology comprises two trigger systems and an accelerator to allow targeted drug release in the large intestine to improve local and/or systemic drug bioavailability. The inner coating layer is designed to accelerate the dissolution of the outer coating, thereby accelerating the release of the active ingredient as soon as the tablet reaches the large intestine. The pH-sensitive and enzyme-sensitive triggers together with the accelerator of the inner layer are designed to open the tablet precisely at the ileo-colonic junction to make the active ingredient available. The OPTICORE technology is particularly suitable for larger single unit formulations and offers great potential to address colon targeted delivery especially in challenging conditions of ulcerative colitis.

With the OPTICORE technology Tillotts Pharma introduces an advanced coating system for accurate site-specific colonic targeting. The combination of two physiological triggers for drug release, supported by a coating dissolution acceleration mechanism is designed to overcome the inter- and intra-individual variability in gastrointestinal physiology. It consists of an outer polysaccharide and polymer coating whose degradation is triggered by either pH or intestinal bacterial enzymes and an inner layer designated to allow for the overall bioavailability of the dissolved active ingredient throughout the target region. The coating has been successfully applied on tablets, gelatine and Hydroxy-propyl-methyl-cellulose (HPMC) capsules and the neutron-activation process does not affect the quality of the drug products.

The OPTICORE technology is designed for accurate drug delivery to the colon making it especially suitable for larger single unit formulations and offers great potential to address a colon targeted delivery especially in the challenging conditions of ulcerative colitis.

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