The shape of pills to come

Round and oval pills are so last year. Sure, they go down easy, but they release their payloads willy-nilly. A better pill would be shaped to release its ingredients at exactly the right time.

That in mind, researchers at the Max Planck Institute (with help from UC Davis) turned to a bit of computer modeling and came up with pills where some parts dissolve faster than others based on the shape of the pill.

The idea is that when a drug is mixed evenly into a dissolvable carrier material, the shape of the pill (and therefore how it dissolves) is the key factor that determines how it releases the drug. So for instance, points and thinner sections would dissolve first, followed by thicker parts of the shape.

They came up with some interesting 3-D printed shapes that release their payloads at different rates:

A bit of experimentation showed it worked; the plan would be to encase those little works of art inside easy-to-swallow capsules. One thing’s unclear, though: Couldn’t they achieve the same results using different coatings on the grains within a capsule?

Presto: a whole new drug!

You’re a drug company about to face the prospect of having your biggest buyer (heavens forbid!) negotiate the price of your product, like some kind of free market!

But there’s a loophole. That buyer can only negotiate the prices of some drugs. Ha! So what do you do? You add hyaluronidase, an ingredient that makes the drug injectable, then claim that it’s an entirely new drug and thus you can charge whatever you want.

Lyme’s Achilles’ heel

Fun fact about the Lyme disease bacteria (Borrelia burgdorferi): It relies on glycolysis for its metabolism. That’s unusual.

Glycolysis works thanks to a molecule called lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). So if you block the LDH, you stop the disease. Hmm.

That’s why UMass researchers found themselves looking into LDH inhibitors. They’re out there as cancer treatments because — wait for it — cancer cells also rely on glycolysis.

So the UMassians did some tests, as researchers do, and they found two LDH inhibitors that “substantially impacted B. burgdorferi growth” in the lab: gossypol (aka AT-101) and oxamate.

It’s still early, of course, but they’re already saying these drugs could be the key to a better treatment for Lyme. And with cases on the rise, the timing is pretty darned good.

Endemic leprosy

Leprosy might be at the point where it’s endemic to the Southeast, especially Florida. It just might be this thing that’s always around — not even newsworthy.

“Steve’s got leprosy.”

“Hm? Oh, too bad. Hey, how’s that new shampoo working out?”

But at the moment it’s bad enough that the CDC has issued a travel warning for people going to Florida.

And yes, you can catch leprosy from armadillos.

Nothing to see here, Citizen

The US government has given Siga Technologies a $138 million contract to supply the national stockpile of the smallpox antiviral Tpoxx.

With age comes wisdom — and better statin response

How well will someone respond to statin therapy? It could depend on their age. Those shifty Danes did a study of more than 80,000 statin users and found that older patients (i.e., 75 or older) saw a bigger difference in their cholesterol levels.

Low- to moderate-intensity statins were associated with a greater reduction in LDL-C levels in older persons than younger persons and may be more appealing as initial treatment in older adults who are at increased risk for adverse events.

Double infection, double protection

A patient got sick with the original SARS virus (SARS-CoV as opposed to SARS-CoV-2). Then he went and got himself a Covid vaccine. That combo, Singaporean scientists found, “generated an extremely broad and powerful antibody response.” The patient ended up with …

Exceptionally potent antibodies that can neutralise virtually all known variants of the COVID-19 virus—including Omicron, as well as other dangerous animal coronaviruses that could potentially cause future outbreaks.

That’s the kind of response that would be perfect in a vaccine: short- and long-term protection. The question is, will they be able to figure out how to replicate it?

The next next opioid show

There’s a new miniseries coming to Netflix August 10: “Painkiller” — the “fictional story based on real events that transpired around the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, and the marketing and distribution of their drug, OxyContin.”

It’s yet another take on the opioid epidemic (after “The Pharmacist,” “Dopesick,” and “The Crime of the Century.” But it does star Matthew Broderick, so there’s that.

Quick read: Funky old treatments

Ah, the good ol’ days of medicine, when treatments were a bit more … interesting. And we’re not talking about leeches or “Dr. McGillicuddy’s Cure-All.” Think instead about prescriptions for ground-up mummy, soaking in a whale carcass, or worse.