The company's technology was found to "significantly" improve the delivery of two classes of antiviral drugs - a protease inhibitor and a reverse transcriptase inhibitor
Lexaria Bioscience Corp () () has reported encouraging early results of studies, which used its DehydraTECH platform to deliver antiviral drugs to animals.
The company's technology was found to "significantly" improve the delivery of two classes of antiviral drugs - a protease inhibitor and a reverse transcriptase inhibitor.
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The findings augur well for the original antiviral therapeutic indications of the drugs that were studied here as well as for other antiviral drugs within their classes for indications, including to treat the coronavirus (COVID-19), said the company.
"We are very pleased to have demonstrated improvements in DehydraTECH's delivery of antiviral drugs in animal bloodstream in our very first attempt to do so," said Chris Bunka, CEO of Lexaria in a statement.
"DehydraTECH is a powerful technology that has now been shown effective through animal testing with antiviral drugs, nicotine, and cannabinoids, demonstrating its versatility to enhance delivery of lipophilic drugs to the bloodstream."
The pilot study was conducted on 40 rats, broken down into four groups of 10 rats per test article. The animals were given DehydraTECH-formulated drugs, while concentration-matched controls were given the same drugs without using DehydraTECH.
The drugs being evaluated were a protease inhibitor called darunavir, which is mainly used to treat HIV/AIDS and a reverse transcriptase inhibitor called efavirenz, also used to treat/prevent HIV/AIDS.
Drugs like darunavir and efavirenz are mainly used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, although their bioavailability alone in oral form is low at 37% and 45%, respectively. If confirmed through additional expanded testing, DehydraTECH could, in theory, improve this bioavailability rate to as high as 64%, said Lexaria.
The company noted that other types of reverse transcriptase inhibitors like the variant remdesivir have already been approved in some jurisdictions to COVID-19 treatment, albeit limited to injectable administration due to poor oral bioavailability.
If DehydraTECH demonstrates effectiveness in enhancing oral deliverability for compounds in these subclassifications of protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors, it may hold promise for COVID-19 applicability as well, also warranting further investigation, highlighted Lexaria.
It added however it was not "making any express or implied claims that its products have the ability to eliminate, cure or contain the Covid-19 pandemic (or SARS-CoV-2 or novel Coronavirus) or any other virally induced diseases at this time".
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