{"id":41819,"date":"2021-06-25T12:30:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T16:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=41819"},"modified":"2021-06-25T12:30:39","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T16:30:39","slug":"long-acting-capsule-helps-reduce-opioid-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=41819","title":{"rendered":"Long-Acting Capsule Helps Reduce Opioid Use"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Ildar Sagdejev, Wikimedia Commons. https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:2008-03-14_Ambulance_on_Luckie_St.jpg)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

25 June 2021. A capsule designed to take once a week is shown in animal tests to continuously deliver a craving-reduction drug in that time and suppress opioid intake. The long-acting capsule is made by biotechnology company Lyndra Therapeutics<\/a> in Watertown, Massachusetts that presented the findings this week at a virtual meeting of the College of Problems on Drug Dependence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Opioid addiction continues to rise in the U.S., with the problem exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show nearly 500,000 people died from drug overdoses<\/a> between 1999 and 2019, with more than 70 percent of those deaths in 2019 involving an opioid. Provisional data<\/a> from CDC show some 90,000 drug overdose deaths are expected for the 12 month period ending in November 2020, with the vast majority of those deaths traced to opioid drugs.<\/p>\n

Lyndra Therapeutics designs long-acting drugs<\/a> that evenly release their payloads from normal-sized capsules for one week or longer. The company’s extended-release therapies aim to improve medication adherence, a problem for many treatments that now require daily medications, such as opioid use disorder. Lyndra’s core technology is a star-shaped matrix with separate arms radiating out from the center, folded into the capsule. Once swallowed, the capsule dissolves and the matrix remains in the stomach for a week in most cases, with each arm containing the drug for release each day. After one week, the matrix degrades and safely passes through the intestines and out the body.<\/p>\n

Buprenorphine remains in the blood stream<\/h4>\n

In their study, Lyndra’s researchers tested the company’s candidate therapy code-named LYN-013, one of two capsules designed by the company for opioid use disorder. LYN-013 delivers buprenorphine<\/a>, a semi-synthetic opioid that satisfies the addiction cravings from opioids without creating the pleasurable intoxication. The drug is not easily formulated for oral use, and is usually given as a film that dissolves in the mouth. And it requires dosing in a doctor\u2019s office or therapy site, with close monitoring, which reduces its utility for some patients. Abuse of buprenorphine is also a risk, thus its modest use and need for close scrutiny.<\/p>\n

The study first assessed the chemical activity of LYN-013 in dogs, with tests of various doses of buprenorphine in the capsules. That part of the study shows LYN-013 releases a near-constant average buprenorphine dose of 24 milligrams a day. Those tests and later tests with monkeys show the drug-delivery matrix is retained in the stomach for seven days, with buprenorphine concentrations remaining in the blood stream for more than seven days. Tests with monkeys, initially non-dependent on opioids, show animals taking LYN-013 suppressed their consumption of the synthetic opioid fentanyl for seven days, with maximum suppression taking place within 48 hours.<\/p>\n

“We are encouraged by the possibility of providing not just the first oral buprenorphine treatment, but to provide it as a weekly dosing option,” says Lyndra Therapeutics CEO Patricia Hurter<\/a> in a company statement<\/a> released through BusinessWire, “which has the potential to be a game-changer for the two million people in the U.S. with opioid use disorder that currently face a lack of therapeutic options, limited access to approved prescribers, and strict therapeutic regimes.”<\/p>\n

Lyndra Therapeutics is spun off from the biomedical engineering and materials science labs of\u00a0Giovanni Traverso<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Robert Langer<\/a> at MIT, co-founders of the company with venture investor Amy Schulman<\/a>. The founders serve on the company’s board of directors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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