Israel’s ‘Accordion Pill’ unfolds according to plan

I thought that this story is pretty cool.

“An oral drug delivery system, the Accordion Pill may look like an ordinary-sized capsule, but once inside the stomach it unfolds like an accordion and positions itself as a controlled-release platform. This unique technology will enable Intec to be a conduit for major slow release drugs that can be administered once daily cutting out the need for someone to take as many as five pills a day.

Our bodies naturally have a hard time absorbing certain medication into the bloodstream. In some instances a drug dosing may be too sudden – and too much active ingredient enters the narrow absorption window; in other cases, an insufficient amount of drug is absorbed and the active ingredients get quickly flushed outside the body.

The Accordion Pill ultimately solves this problem by retaining the pharmaceutical ingredients in the stomach for as long as 24 hours, compared to a maximum stomach residency of three hours in a regular formulation. It can also be designed to release the ingredients at desired intervals according to a drug developer?s demands. Within a day the small accordion structure biodegrades and passes through the system.

The Accordion Pill targets drugs that need to be absorbed by the bloodstream in a limited area of the upper small intestine known as the ‘narrow absorption window’, a physical area of the lower stomach and the upper part of the small intestine. Drugs that could benefit from Intec’s technology are used for treating a wide variety of conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, hypertension, AIDS, obesity and for pain relief. “

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