faster. better. fewer.
It’s the modern business mantra. No one has more at stake in finding innovative solutions that drive better results than the pharmaceutical industry, and the customers who rely on those companies for their daily medication needs.
When a leading pharmaceutical company came to Ashland asking about bioavailability enhancement, Dr. Vivian Bi and her colleagues at Ashland’s lab in Wilmington, Delaware, got right to work. The team was looking to solve the challenge of making the active ingredients in drugs dissolve easier so they can more readily enter the bloodstream and do their job.
It’s not a unique problem. Experts recognize that 90 percent of medications under development today have poor solubility. In this case, it meant patients could need up to 18 capsules or tablets for an effective dosage. It’s a prescription for problems, for both the patients and the pharmaceutical companies.
Dr. Bi and the Ashland team focused on finding the polymer – or combination of polymers – that enhanced solubility without undesirable side effects. Off-the-shelf answers clearly didn’t work on such a complicated problem. But a willingness to think innovatively did. “Sometime in the lab, the typical technology does not work,” Dr. Bi notes. “You need to go outside the conventional and entertain different ideas.”
The result: a single pill that doubled the exposure of the active ingredient in the body.
Faster results. More effective product performance. Fewer pills or tablets to take. A solution that benefits the Ashland customer, and their customers, too.
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