Drug Solubility Enhancement Technology

Overview

Poor water solubility is a major barrier to drug development and efficacy. We developed a drug-delivery platform that solubilizes poorly soluble compounds, enabling impressive enhancement for both new and existing drugs.

Commercialisation opportunities

Co-development, technology licensing, future sales of drugs

Problem addressed

Poor water solubility is a pervasive problem that we aim to address because it leads to costly and inefficient formulation development, limits bioavailability and thus compromises the clinical performance of many compounds, and necessitates more frequent dosing due to inadequate or short-lived drug exposure—ultimately reducing patient adherence and convenience.

Innovation

Since many kinds of crystalline drugs are difficult to dissolve when directly exposed to water, we have developed a new adsorption-solubilizing material based on nano-silicon spheres. As a third party excipient, the material can adsorb drug molecules under dry conditions and release molecules in aqueous environment. Up to three orders of magnitude of water solubilization enhancement can be achieved throuth our method.

Key impact

Up to 2000-fold increase in solubility
Universal platform for many drugs
Impressive stability, biocompatibility, and bioavailability
The process is simple and easy for application

Award

49th International Exhibition of Investions Geneva Silver Medal

Application

Developing new drugs with excellent bioavailability
Improving and extending patent life of old drugs

Advanced Biomedical Instrumentation Centre

Biomedical instrumentation plays a critical and increasing role, albeit invisible to most people, in the healthcare industry by enabling more accurate diagnoses, effective treatments, and earlier intervention and prevention capabilities. Advancing the development of cutting-edge medical devices, actuators and sensors requires collaboration among talented scientists, engineers and clinicians, as well as an environment that facilitates the commercialisation of research results into real-world applications that are accessible to a broader population.

The mission of the Advanced Biomedical Instrumentation Centre is to accelerate progress in translating advanced biomedical instrumentation from research and development into real-world healthcare solutions that benefit people in Hong Kong and around the world. The Centre aims to foster collaboration among top-notch engineers, scientists and clinicians in the US and Hong Kong to develop next-generation microfluidics and low-cost instrumentation technologies. It also takes advantage of Hong Kong’ s vibrant start-up community to commercialise the research work tailored for Asian patients.

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