We deliver active ingredients to where they're needed
To ensure that active ingredients in tablets and capsules act at the right time and the right place during their journey through the human body, Evonik provides them with intelligent protection and release mechanisms. Whether as coatings or excipients, the pharmaceutical polymers of the EUDRAGIT® product family are vital components of drug delivery systems. Thanks to our additives, drugs ingested in tablet or capsule form are transported to the exact site of therapeutic action.
Pills with navigation systems and timers
EUDRAGIT®, for example, can release the active substance either in the stomach or subsequently in the intestinal system. Active substance release can also be temporally controlled. Time-release preparations release their contents in a steady dose over a period of several hours, thanks to EUDRAGIT® coatings. Other variants trigger abrupt release after the lapse of a definite time span. EUDRAGIT® functions almost as a navigation system and timer for tablets, capsules, and granulates. And as a coating that masks odors and flavors, it lays to rest the myth that medicine, to be effective, must have an unpleasant taste.
Intelligent drugs
In the design of drug delivery systems, the exact definition of the release profile is essential. In addition to special properties for diffusion control, such as the permeability and thickness of the EUDRAGIT® coating, the pH level in the human body is important. EUDRAGIT® coatings resistant to gastric acid, for example, dissolve only in the intestinal tract at a pH between 5.5 and 7, thus protecting a sensitive active ingredient from acidic gastric juice, or the stomach mucosal lining from irritant active ingredients. For some conditions, release in the colon ("colon targeting") is required for therapeutic reasons. Sophisticated drugs use a combination of various EUDRAGIT® products; these can, for example, pass through the stomach and small intestine and then function as a time-release preparation in the colon over several hours.
Right into the cell
EUDRAGIT® research is already thinking one step ahead. Drug delivery systems will soon be able to surmount a particularly complex obstacle: the cell wall. To achieve this, the active ingredient will be combined with components of breast milk, which serve as "door openers." This Trojan horse will be able to pass into the interior of human cells, allowing the use of drugs with active ingredients that have so far only poorly penetrated the body.
