- A global innovator in drug delivery platforms, Lexaria has developed a patented technology, DehydraTECH(TM)
- Through research, Lexaria has evidenced that DehydraTECH enhances the efficiency and speed of orally- administered fat-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (“APIs”)
- Lexaria is consistently enhancing the delivery of APIs that affect current oral formulations: speed of onset, limited absorption, and low membrane permeability
- Lexaria has conducted numerous ground-breaking studies, some of which open up the possibility of fast-acting oral products that avoid the lung diseases and cancers caused by inhalation of combusted molecules common in smoking
Oral formulations account for approximately 90% of the global share of all pharmaceutical formulations made for human use. Statistics also show that about 60% of all established, commercially available small-molecule drug products today and approximately 84% of all best-selling pharmaceutical products are orally administered. Oral drug administration is preferred because it offers numerous advantages over other delivery methods (for instance, intramuscular, subcutaneous, intravenous, and inhalation), not the least of which is high compliance of patients. Additionally, the drugs can be used to offer localized treatment of affected regions within the gastrointestinal tract.
“Despite these advantages, the development of oral formulations presents several challenges, which are mainly attributed to the physicochemical properties of drugs, including poor water solubility and membrane permeability. In addition, the absorption of drugs can be limited by their poor chemical and biological stability, as well as by physiological barriers, including pH, efflux transporters, and metabolic enzymes,” reads a 2021 review article published in the Frontiers in Pharmacology Journal (https://ibn.fm/Fj0TC).
In understanding the shortcomings of orally administered drugs, Lexaria is rising to the occasion, developing a drug delivery technology that solves the aforementioned challenges. Lexaria Bioscience (NASDAQ: LEXX), a global innovator in drug delivery platforms, has developed DehydraTECH(TM), a patented technology which enhances the efficiency and speed of orally-administered fat-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (“API”).
“DehydraTECH combines lipophilic APIs with specific fatty acid and carrier compounds, thereby improving the way APIs enter the bloodstream while increasing the effectiveness of fat-soluble active molecules allowing lowering overall dosing and promoting healthier oral ingestion methods,” Lexaria explained in its 2021 annual report (https://ibn.fm/W2hsW).
The company began developing DehydraTECH in 2014 and has since strengthened the technology as well as broadened its possible applications. Now, Lexaria’s website notes, the technology “can be applied to many different drugs and other active ingredients such as vitamins in oral formats including tablets, capsules, oral suspensions – and even foods, beverages, and topical preparations.”
Lexaria has also conducted in vitro and in vivo human and/or animal studies that have evidenced the technology’s ability to mask unwanted tastes, improve the speed of onset, increase bioavailability and brain absorption, and lower dosing – thereby reducing drug administration costs – of APIs.
So far, Lexaria has explored how DehydraTECH improves APIs, not limited to, cannabidiol (“CBD”), oral nicotine, and antiviral drugs, with the company describing its oral nicotine investigations as “ground-breaking studies to open doors previously closed to disruptive new technology, including the possibility of potent and fast-acting ingestible products that avoid the lung diseases and cancers caused by inhalation of combusted molecules common in smoking” (https://ibn.fm/ysLHG).
In a series of animal studies staggered between 2018 and 2021, Lexaria evidenced that DehydraTECH delivered considerable nicotine absorption performance improvements compared to controls. The technology resulted in faster delivery of the compound, a higher quantity of peak nicotine delivered to the bloodstream, greater bioavailability, and higher brain absorption (as evidenced by high levels of nicotine in the brain). In its latest animal study, whose results the company released last year, Lexaria revealed that DehydraTECH was between 10x to 20x faster in achieving peak delivery of oral nicotine to the bloodstream than controls. It also attained peak nicotine levels that were up to 10x higher than controls (https://ibn.fm/uBCLc). Now, Lexaria is focusing on the human nicotine study, NIC-H22-1, with dosing expected to begin this summer.
The company hopes that the use of DehydraTECH-nicotine pouches –will help avoid harmful outcomes associated with smoking tobacco, a source of nicotine. Tobacco use causes 480,000 deaths (including passive smokers) annually in the United States (https://ibn.fm/dbT1L). Globally, tobacco claims over 8 million lives every year, 7 million of which result from direct tobacco use, while about 1.2 million are caused by the inhalation of secondhand smoke (https://ibn.fm/ZM7lE).
In its quest to promoting healthier alternatives to traditional orally administered drugs as well as morbidity-causing practices such as smoking, Lexaria is simultaneously tapping into multibillion-dollar industries. Valued at an estimated $5.9 billion in 2022, the global nicotine pouches market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 31% to reach $29.6 billion by 2028 (https://ibn.fm/krqIF). Similarly, the oral drug delivery market, which was valued at $100.05 billion in 2018, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.99% to reach $150.06 billion by 2024 (https://ibn.fm/wTcW1).
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.LexariaBioscience.com.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to LEXX are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/LEXX
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