The buccal patch project, being conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Drug Formulation and Delivery at the University of South Australia, has developed novel platform technology for the delivery of a potentially wide range of drugs for which other routes of administration are less safe and/or less effective.
Using this technology, drugs can be delivered locally to the mouth, or systemically via diffusion across the buccal mucosa into the bloodstream. This route bypasses the gut-liver system that often destroys orally-administered agents, rendering them ineffective.
Investigations into buccal mucoadhesive drug delivery systems have been increasing in recent years, although commercially available products are rare.
Our novel, proprietary design is relatively simple, so that scale up for commercial manufacture would be straightforward and manufacturing costs would be low.
Some of the advantages of drug delivery via a buccal patch are:
The novel buccal patches have been successfully tested for content uniformity, in vitro mucoadhesion, ex vivo mucoadhesion, in vitro drug release and ex vivo drug permeation.
PharmaQest plans to undertake clinical testing of the buccal adhesive patches, beginning with Phase I clinical trials for the two drug-loaded patches developed to date.