Tasty medicine

Many of us have problems swallowing tablets or capsules, particularly if they taste bad. The worst is for children or the elderly. Researchers at NTNU have previously developed the technology needed to manufacture cod liver oil and omega 3 as chewable tablets. Now, in cooperation with a pharmaceutical company, the researchers have taken this approach a step further.

The idea is to encapsulate bad-tasting medicine in a tasty and chewable “pillow” of alginate and gelatine (biopolymers), from which the bad medicine taste can’t escape until the pill is safely in the patient’s stomach. The use of different types of polymers allows researchers to control the speed of the medicine’s release. The first medicines produced using this approach are expected to be on the market in the next couple of years.