Softabs-designing sugar-free viscoelastic drug delivery capsules for hydrophobic cannabinoid, nutraceutical, and pharmacological delivery across mucosal membranes

大麻素，特别是大麻二酚显示出作为药物的希望，现在经常被禁止用于各种适应症。主要的挑战之一是缺乏标准剂量和安全的摄入方法。吸食干燥的植物材料会导致有害颗粒进入肺部，而自制的“可食用物品”的效力各不相同，由于它们必须通过肝脏消化，因此会导致不同人进入血液的大麻二酚水平不同。油酊剂通过口腔粘膜被吸附，但很脏。在这项由NSERC和Mitacs支持的为期三年的合作中，SofTab Technologies与温莎大学化学和生物化学教授John Trant博士和Simon rondeau - gagn<e:1>博士合作，准备一种软咀嚼配方。这些被提议的软糖，虽然表面上类似于“软糖”，但在实践中却大不相同。它们是一种软胶囊状的乳剂油，咀嚼时溶解在口腔中，穿过粘膜直接进入血流。它们比油更美味，并以一种简单的形式提供这种规定的剂量。合作伙伴将致力于为纯素食和清真市场设计新的特定配方，并为不同的剂型和剂量中不同水平的大麻改进配方。这是具有挑战性的，因为配方的任何改变都会改变纳米乳液的性质和SofTab的整体性质。为了加快未来的工作，我们希望能够更好地理解和准确预测成分的变化如何影响这些特性。这对科学界通常是有用的，因为它提供了对复杂两亲系统的自组装的见解。我们还将通过小鼠模型来观察纳米乳剂穿过粘膜的效果，以确定患者可以获得多少剂量。该项目的最终目标是生产一种可靠、安全和令人愉快的方法来引入医用大麻素，然后将其用于将这项技术扩展到其他类别的维生素和补充剂中，这些技术将从同样的方法中受益。

Cannabinoids, especially cannabidiol show promise as medicinal agents and are often now proscribed for a variety of indications. One of the major challenges is the lack of a standard dose, and safe ways to ingest. Smoking dried plant material causes harmful particles to enter the lungs, while homemade "edibles" can both vary in their potency and as they must pass through the liver due to digestion, can lead to different levels of cannabidiol entering the blood of different people. Oil tinctures are adsorbed across the mucosal membranes in the mouth, but are foul. In this three-year partnership, supported by NSERC and Mitacs, SofTab Technologies is partnering with University of Windsor Chemistry and Biochemistry professors Dr. John Trant and Dr. Simon Rondeau-Gagné to prepare a soft chewable formulation. These proposed SofTabs, although superficially similar to "gummies" are very different in practice. They are soft capsules of an emulsion of oils that dissolves in the mouth upon chewing and crosses the mucosal membranes moving directly into the blood stream. They are far more palatable than oils, and provide this defined dose in a simple form. The partners will work on designing new specific formulations for the vegan and halal markets as well as refining the formulation for different dosage forms and different levels of cannabis in the dose. This is challenging as any change to the formulation changes both the properties of the nanoemulsion AND the properties of the SofTab as a whole. To accelerate the work in the future, we hope to develop a better understanding and ability to predict precisely how changes in the ingredients affect these properties. This is generally useful to the scientific community as it provides insight into the self-assembly of complex amphiphilic systems. We will also look at how well the nanoemulsions cross the mucosal membrane using a mouse model to confirm how much of the dose is available to patients. The end-goal of this project is to produce a reliable, safe, and pleasant method for introducing medical cannabinoids, and it will be used to then expand this technology to other classes of vitamins and supplements that would benefit from the same approach.