Dysphagia (swallowing difficulty) is a growing health concern in our aging population. Age-related changes in swallowing physiology as well as age-related diseases are predisposing factors for dysphagia in older adults. In the US, dysphagia affects 300,000–600,000 persons yearly. 

Although the exact prevalence of dysphagia across different settings is unclear, conservative estimates suggest that 15% of the older population is affected by dysphagia. In addition, some neurological diseases, for instance Parkinson's, leads to patients having problems with eating, swallowing and controlling their saliva. For these patients, taking conventional medicines such as tablets or capsules is not possible and therefore alternative dosage forms are required. 

At Fluid Pharma, we have developed the MicroCoat™ technology to facilitate the development of liquid dosage form solutions for patients who have difficulty swallowing tablets or capsules. 

Key benefits of the technology include:

• Dosage forms that are easy-to-swallow with no taste sensation. Ideal for administration to patients with dysphagia.
• Taste masking and tailored drug release profiles can be achieved.
• Allows for the development of line-extensions of currently available products. 

Microparticles with homogeneous properties are crucial for pharmaceutical applications where the prior knowledge of exact drug loading and release behaviour is essential to achieve targeted therapeutic goals. Various methods such as membrane microemulsion or templating to assemble uniform solid particles often involve multiple steps, including post-processing for purification and recovery, rendering less flexibility in the procedure as well as increasing cost of manufacture.

MicroCoat™ is a cutting-edge technology for  convenient manufacture of drug-loaded microparticles, with functional polymers used to provide easily tunable drug release kinetics. 

Key benefits of the technology include:

• Significant advantages over conventional single-unit dosage forms, including  reduction in varibility of drug release in vivo. 
• Particles can be tailored for site specific release (proximal and distal small intestine and colonic targetting) with rapid and reliable release at the absorption site. 
• Technology can be applied to a wide range of APIs  (water soluble and insoluble, ionizable and neutral) to achieve controlled/sustained release profiles. 
• Proprietary analytical methods can be applied to obtain in vitro drug release predictive to in vivo performance.