Liposomes have been around a long time. What you start to see is combining some
of these interesting delivery systems with ways that you can formulate the drug
into something unique that will work well.
so liposomes help encapsulate something that would normally be broken down or
wouldn't be able to penetrate and get to the right area of the body.
So you might see and these liposomes, they're just lipid bilayers surrounding
your drug, and they just eventually melt away, degrade in the body and that
releases your drug. So, there's something called
biodegradable systems. You can infuse your drug into this
biodegradable, like kind of jelly or gel-like substance and you can inject it
into the body. And your normal water content in your
body just slowly breaks it down and breaks it apart, slowly releasing the
drug. And then the gel-like stuff that was
there just breaks apart into substances you already have in your body anyway.
So they kind, kind of take advantage of some unique substances.
>> I have a question. >> Yeah.
>> Does the size of the pill correlate at all with the duration of the
infection? >> a little bit, so not much.
The size of the pill might correlate a little bit with how quickly it can pass
through your stomach. So, the smaller the pill, the more
quickly it can dissolve or the more quickly it'll just pass through your
stomach even if it's still in part together.
the larger pills will sit in your stomach longer.
And your intestines are the major side of drug absorption.
You don't absorb much from your stomach because the intestines have a huge
surface area compared to your stomach, and they have a much more porous
permeable membrane. It's much easier for drugs to cross
through the membrane of the intestines than it is at the stomach.
The mucus lining is thinner. You know, there are lots of differences.
So if you have a very large pill, even if you haven't taken it with a meal, it
might sit in your stomach a while longer, and you'll only start to see the
absorption when it gets broken down enough to pass into your intestines.
So you'd see a delay, maybe in absorption.
But once it reaches your intestines, it's going to travel through those about, at
a, at the same pace that the smaller pill would.
So, it really only affects sort of that initial time frame of absorption.
Yeah? >> If you had a small pill and it just
went directly out of your stomach. Would it dissolve as it goes through the
rest of the small intestine or would it get out into the large intestine It could
be either? >> It could be either or depends on the
characteristics of that pill. So you can get undigested, you know,
material all the way through your intestines and excreted out in the feces.
Hopefully, you've designed your drug or your solid oral dosage form to break
apart well enough, that it will dissolve throughout your intestines.
It's fluid filled, it's moving an pulsing and mixing, and so, you do dissolve stuff
all the way if its not already dissolved. You can continue dissolve in the
intestines, so, but it really depends on that drug and that pill form.
Alright, another example that a lot of people are doing a lot of research in our
nanospheres. And again, trying to figure out a way to
protect the peptide or the protein or some drug that's not well-absorbed orally
through maybe something very small that you could trap it in, and if it's small
enough, maybe it could be absorbed orally, okay?
So, there's a lot of work being doing in nanospheres they're looking at this, not
just for drug delivery, but also for like, diagnostic testing and things like
that. So, and, for example, a rat study showed
an insulin nanosphere formulation was able to be absorbed orally.