COLAL^®

The delivery of drugs specifically to the colon (the large intestine) offers the potential to improve the treatment of colonic diseases. Achieving reliable and consistent delivery of drugs to the colon has, however, proved to be difficult due to individual variation in conditions within the gastrointestinal (“GI”) tract and in the transit time for the contents of the GI tract. Alizyme’s proprietary drug delivery system, COLAL^®, overcomes these difficulties.

COLAL^® involves a coating for drug pellets, tablets or capsules which is composed of ethylcellulose and a specific form of amylose (derived from starch) called 'glassy amylose'. The glassy amylose is not digested by human enzymes as the preparation moves down the GI tract, but is digested by bacterial enzymes that are found only in the colon. When the coated product reaches the colon, the coating is degraded, allowing the drug to be released.

Alizyme has taken COLAL^® from the research stage and developed it into a drug delivery system suitable for pharmaceutical application. It has been combined with an approved generic steroid (prednisolone sodium metasulfobenzoate) to form one of Alizyme’s drug candidates, COLAL-PRED^®. Through combination with novel and existing products, additional applications may be available for COLAL^® where delivery of drugs to the colon is required.


Note: COLAL^® and COLAL-PRED^® are registered trademarks of Alizyme Therapeutics Limited