Dubai scientist delivers drugs in gum form

Invention may be used to deliver multivitamins or anti-motion sickness drugs

DUBAI // A scientist in the emirate has developed a formula for a new type of chewing gum that can quickly deliver travel sickness drugs or multivitamins to the body.

Dr Aliasgar Shahiwala, an associate professor at Dubai Pharmacy College, says he has perfected a method of producing medicated chewing gum so it is cheaper for companies to develop.

He is promoting the formula to European pharmaceutical firms and hopes it will one day be widely used.

"It's a new dosage form for existing drugs which are already on the market," Dr Shahiwala said. "Normal tablets can take up to one hour to act on the body, but medicated chewing gum is immediate.

"Moreover, you don't need water to swallow the dose. Wherever you are, you can just take it."

The way the gum works is simple. The drug is released through chewing, and is in turn more quickly absorbed into the blood through the mouth's highly permeable membranes.

Some medicated gums, also known as functional chewing gums, are already available, with the best known being the nicotine gum that smokers have been using to quit since the early 1990s.

However, the first of its kind was Aspergum, which was designed back in 1924 to administer aspirin.

Since then, companies have been competing to develop new chemical combinations to improve the medicated gums' shelf life and uptake efficiency.

Part of the problem is that in order to mix the ingredients, the gum has to be melted to a semi-solid state during manufacture.

But the temperature at which the hard gum resin softens - typically 60°C to 70°C - can affect the molecular structure of certain drugs.

Vitamins, for instance, are particularly sensitive. Applying heat can shorten the shelf life of vitamin-infused gum from the standard two years to as little as six months.

Instead, Dr Shahiwala has developed a technique by which the ingredients can be mixed without heating. It uses a powdered, rather than solid, gum base. This can be easily mixed with a powdered drug dose and then pressed into a solid form using a tablet compression machine, commonly employed by pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Since most of the materials, including the powdered gum base, are already available, research and development costs are reduced substantially.

Because of the potential savings, Dr Shahiwala was invited last September to give a talk on medicated chewing gum at a conference in Trento, Italy, in front of several pharmaceutical firms. However, he has yet to receive a formal commercial offer.

"Most companies aren't doing much research in this area," he said. "I wanted to promote awareness on the benefits of this delivery system."

A recent report by the business intelligence firm Euromonitor International found that chewing gum, and in particular functional gum, is becoming more popular in the Middle East.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, retail sales were expected to reach US$82 million (Dh301m) last year, up 4 per cent on the previous year. That means the market is ripe for innovation, the report noted, particularly in functional gum.

Caffeine gum, once the staple of every petrol station in Dubai, is now less popular, perhaps as a result of the economic climate, said Francisco Redruello, a senior food analyst at Euromonitor. "Two years ago we were seeing more people who were interested in gum with energy-boosting properties, but now the trend is toward relaxation," he said.

"For instance, if you are stressed because of the recession and you chew relaxing gum, it can help you sleep better. That's the climate at the moment."

Dr Shahiwala is studying functional gums for problems including headaches and motion sickness.

"He has already done the groundwork," said Dr Saeed Ahmed Khan, the dean of Dubai Pharmacy College. "Here, getting the materials is not easy, it takes some time. Hopefully he will continue his research next year."

Despite having developed what he describes as a new formula for medicated chewing gum, Dr Shahiwala has so far refused to apply for a patent for it. "I am doing this out of scientific interest rather than commercial interest," he said. "However, I hope that this will one day be widely available."