Medications resistant to abuse by crushing and hot aqueous extraction

Grant Winners

Dean

Abstract

This project seeks to deter prescription drug abuse by examining ways to transform conventional tablets into tamper resistant medications. Prescription drug abuse is at epidemic proportions and has become a serious problem affecting public health. Abusers commonly tamper with drug products to speed their absorption and enhance their effect. With increasing availability of prescription drugs, modern solutions that can thwart abuse are urgently needed. This proposal looks at developing drug compositions and dosage forms that deter the most common methods of medication tampering. Popular methods include snorting of crushed tablets, and injecting solutions of crushed tablets. Our effort is to design tablets that can, a) resist crushing force, and b) intelligently interact with water and alcohol at different temperatures. These novel compositions will have the potential to deter drug abuse by a) insufflation, and b) injection. To resist crushing and hence insufflation, the tablet contains one or more polymers which make the composition soft or tough and hence non-breakable. To resist solvent extraction and hence injection, the tablet contains one or more polymers that enhance viscosity of the aqueous solutions, and form gel when the extracting solution is warmed up. These modified compositions are not expected to change the release profile of the drug as intended for regular patients.