Enhanced Absorption Technology
EquiTech’s enhanced absorption technology and lead compounds are based on groundbreaking scientific discoveries made by the company’s founder, Dr. Fakhreddin Jamali, a world-renowned Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Alberta.
Typically, people take analgesic products such as ibuprofen in order to relieve pain. The desired effect of the drug is to quickly relieve pain. However, Dr. Jamali has found that people in pain absorb ibuprofen slower (as compared to healthy people). This means that ibuprofen is slower to take effect when people are in pain.
The graph below demonstrates these drastic differences in ibuprofen absorption. A healthy patient is shown in blue – most of the ibuprofen is absorbed within the first two hours after taking the drug. The same patient is shown immediately after a wisdom tooth extraction in red – there is a significant delay in the time to peak absorption and a significant decrease in the ibuprofen levels in the blood stream. This means that it took longer for ibuprofen to take effect when the patient was in pain.
Ibuprofen plasma concentration in a representative human patient, before wisdom tooth extraction & after dental wisdom tooth extraction, using standard ibuprofen. Note the delay in absorption and lower peak concentration when the patient is in pain.
This phenomenon occurs because of decreased activity in the stomach when a patient is in pain (Jamali et al., British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology: 1999; 47, 391-396) and is considered to be the reason for significant consumer dissatisfaction with pain relief products on the market.
EquiTech’s enhanced absorption technology platform addresses this problem. It is based on simple, yet sophisticated pharmaceutical science to enhance the bioavailability of pharmaceutical ingredients that have already been approved for use. EquiTech's lead compound ZAG-1701 is a fast-acting ibuprofen product for the treatment of mild to moderate acute pain. Acute pain is a normal short-term sensation triggered in the nervous system to alert you to an injury or an illness, and should be differentiated from chronic persistent pain. EquiTech scientists have shown that ZAG-1701 absorbs into the body faster than standard ibuprofen in the pain-mimicking animal model. The effectiveness of the lead compound in humans will be tested in clinical trials beginning in Q1 of 2003.
In fact, EquiTech’s enhanced absorption technology could work in any situation where the stomach has decreased activity. Therefore, EquiTech’s technology platform can be applied to pain situations and to many other medical conditions, allowing EquiTech to develop a pipeline of products using this enhanced absorption technology.
| Advantage EquiTech - Current pain relief products work slower when patients are in pain - Equitech’s patent-pending enhanced absorption technology addresses this problem and will be used to develop a pipeline of products to address a variety of medical conditions. |
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