Valencia (EFE).- Swallowable and personalized medicines with a particular physical structure allow people with dysphagia to access their treatments, a disorder that prevents swallowing and swallowing and which affects 8 out of 100 Spaniards, including 85% of Alzheimer’s patients at some point in their disease.
It is estimated that 30% of those over the age of 65 suffer from dysphagia, an “underdiagnosed disorder, which is not seen but which is dealt with daily by health workers who treat older people with certain pathologies”, as explained to Efe by the researcher in mechanochemistry and reactive extrusion at the Technological Institute of Plastics (Aimplas), Carolina Acosta.
For this reason, this center, belonging to the Network of Technological Institutes of the Valencian Community (Redit), has launched the Deglumed project, with which they seek new formulations of drugs, nutritional supplements, vitamins and extracts to facilitate their swallowing and avoid choking that, in many cases, can claim the lives of people with dysphagia.
Acosta has indicated that people with this pathology are generally people over 70 years of age, Alzheimer’s patients, people who have suffered neck or head cancer or who have had to go through the ICU or be intubated due to Covid.
As a result of mechanical problems in swallowing or because the neural reflex that “gives the order” to swallow is not activated, these people cannot drink or eat normally and, therefore, it is easy for them to be malnourished or dehydrated, to choke and that they cannot incorporate the medicines they need to treat their illnesses, which are generally distributed in pills or dissolved in water.
Extrusion and personalized medicines
For this reason, Aimplas seeks, through the ‘hot-melt extrusion’ procedure, new drug formats that awaken that neural “order” to swallow in people with dysphagia and allow the preparation of swallowable medicines.
This technology, which is carried out with specific machinery, makes it possible to “reorder” the solid elements, and it is a process that is already used in the pharmaceutical industry to make medicines soluble.
Specifically, in the clean room of Aimplas -designed specifically to produce drugs in it-, project technicians explore new formulations for medicines, food and vitamin supplements and can produce, in this phase of “pilot scale” from 300 to 500 grams per hour.
3d printers
As a result, a filament or a “pellet” -shredded thread- is obtained, which, in the next step, is incorporated into a 3D printer that shapes it.
But not any shape can be easily swallowed, as Acosta explains, but two have been identified that people with dysphagia can swallow.
“Film-type formats are swallowable, such as rectangular sheets of chewing gum a few centimeters long, and small tablets that dissolve in contact with saliva. In both cases, through extrusion, we can adjust the texture and the degree of humidity to favor the activation of salivation”, has detailed the person in charge of the project.
Tailor-made medicines
In addition, this technique allows the creation of completely personalized medications, which are adapted to the degree of dysfunction presented by different patients.
Using extrusion to manufacture pharmaceuticals not only allows access for people who cannot swallow, but is also more sustainable because, as it is a process for mixing solid components, solvents are not used.
“It is easy to scale and use at an industrial level, because it is equipment that is already known, used in the food industry and also in the pharmaceutical industry,” says Carolina Acosta, who also points out that it is a fast process, which allows obtain a large quantity processed “in minutes”, which reduces energy expenditure.
A disease that can affect everyone
“It seems that dysphagia is a minority disease, but, according to statistics, one in seven people in the world suffers from it or will suffer from it,” explains Acosta, who assures that, as it is partly linked to age, many people, “Even if you don’t believe it, you are going to suffer it.”
Hence the need to design swallowable medicines for this group, which has also grown as an unforeseen consequence of the pandemic and hospital treatments against Covid, says Acosta.
“I would like to think that in the Valencian Community and Spain this technology can be promoted in the pharmaceutical and nutrition industry”, concludes the researcher, who highlights the need to continue betting on personalized medicine: “It is clear that not all of us have the same ailment, but also that not all of us suffer from it in the same way”. EFE
