Far from a bitter pill to swallow: thermogelling nanoemulsion technique could pave the way towards smaller tablets

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; MA, USA) have described a thermogelling nanoemulsion platform, which shows promise for improving the formulation efficiency of oral drug products and could pave the way towards smaller tablets. Many active pharmaceutical ingredients in marketed drugs are hydrophobic, making them poorly soluble in water and creating formulation challenges. A process that is commonly employed to create formulations of drugs with hydrophobic active ingredients involves milling the active compounds into nanocrystals and combining these with excipient compounds like methylcellulose, which readily dissolves in water. However, the MIT team expressed that there are inefficiencies associated...