SBIR Phase I: A Tunable Supersaturating Drug Delivery System for Cocrystals of Poorly Soluble Drugs

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a drug delivery platform for drugs with poor water solubility. Poor water solubility significantly hinders the delivery of some drug compounds into the body, which leads to poor drug performance. Cocrystals are new materials that can improve the water solubility of a poorly water soluble drug compounds. In order to take advantage of the improved cocrystal properties, a suitable drug delivery system is required. The current drug delivery approaches for cocrystals are failing to control the parameters critical to optimizing performance of poorly soluble cocrystallized drugs. By tuning the effective cocrystal solubility using the innovative approaches proposed here, a robust delivery system for highly soluble cocrystals will be developed. The broader/commercial impacts of this research are the potential to create a tunable drug delivery platform that can result in improvements in drug product performance. This technology will also create new product opportunities for existing drug products (e.g. rapid onset of pain relieving drugs), which can provide society with improved medicines. Cocrystal technology has significant advantages over competing technologies including: 1) the physical properties of cocrystals are superior to the physical forms used in competing technologies, and 2) intellectual property protection is stronger, which creates an increased commercial incentive for adopting cocrystal technology.