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RevolUiTionary Research, Spalter — 5. March 2014 at 22:30
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How long before it hits?
by Matthew Lynch
Determining how long it takes for a drug to hit your system is
incredibly complex.
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A close-up of the artificial model. (Photo: Faculty of Health Sciences)
Asking how long it takes a drug to enter your blood stream is a bit like asking how
long a piece of string is. The answer: it depends. What type of drug is it? Where is it
being absorbed? Has the drug been mixed with anything?
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All of these influence how long it takes your body to absorb a substance. Gøril
Eide Flaten and her students from the Department of Pharmacy have been working
to increase our understanding of this issue.
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It started with Flaten’s own Ph.D. project, which looked at the way drugs were
absorbed into the blood stream through the small intestine. Previously when a drug
company wanted an answer to this question they would run experiments on
complicated cell-based systems or a clinical trial where rats were given doses of
the new drug and monitored to see how it was absorbed.
In addition to the ethical issues of testing drugs on animals, this technique is time
consuming, expensive and requires a lot of controls to get a reliable answer.
Flaten wanted to create an artificial model that mimicked what was happening
inside the body. She created a kind of filter that mimicked the fatty balloons that
exist within the small intestine. This filter then imitates the way a drug would pass
into the body. While Flaten says, “On paper it sounded like a simple enough idea”,
the reality of creating such a product was in fact much more complex.
Eventually Flaten succeeded in creating such an artificial model. She says “It felt
pretty good once the model was made, as it was cheaper, more reliable, and
reduced the number of animals on which tests were being done.”
These early successes were published and Flaten put her idea on ice while she
undertook a research project in Texas working on a cure for cancer.
She returned to Norway to take up an associate professor position, and now has
several Ph.D students of her own. One of these has taken her initial discoveries
and applied them to the way the skin absorbs substances. This research has also
had its fair share of issues. Take for example the fact that, as the first layer of
protection for the body, skin is designed to keep substances out. This means any
model will differ dramatically from a model on the intestine, as the intestine is
designed to absorb substances.
This research has yielded results with a paper by Flaten’s Ph.D student recently
submitted for publication.
These models can be used to model how the skin absorbs beauty products or how
does damaged or burned skin absorb medical creams differently. There are
obviously some limitations when working with a model, as it is not an exact replica
of how drugs will be absorbed by the body. The main advantage for pharmaceutical
companies is that it quickly and cheaply allows them to identify, and further test,
promising products.
This means that Flaten and her Ph.D students are having a direct impact on the
price of bringing new drugs to market and the time it takes for these new drugs to
be tested and approved. It is estimated that for every 10,000 drugs a large
pharmaceutical trials, only 1 of these will make it to market. The impact Flaten’s
research can have for these companies is therefore profound.
Admirably, Flaten and her previous supervisors decided to publish these works in
order to make the advancements public knowledge with the aim that her research
will eventually be able to benefit everyone. Small improvements from many different
places is part of what helps the field of medicine continue to advance rapidly.