Gentle and long-lasting Pain Relief
An innovative depot formulation has been developed by the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Basel in collaboration with the University of Zurich, industry partners, and the Cantonal Veterinary Office of Basel-Stadt. The formulation is designed to prolong the duration of action of the analgesic Buprenorphine, thereby reducing the need for additional injections in animals.
Buprenorphine is a common medication used in veterinary practice for the prevention and management of pain in animals. Unfortunately, commercially available preparations have a limited duration of action of approximately six hours. This necessitates regular re-administration of the medication within the first one to two days following a painful procedure.
Administering Buprenorphine through injections or by adding it to drinking water overnight are the two common methods. However, both of these methods have their drawbacks. Injections require handling and fixation that causes elevated stress to the animal. On the other hand, the intake of painkillers through drinking water during the night may not be consistent, leading to uncertainty in the quantity of painkiller ingested by the mouse.
The newly developed depot formulation provides a consistent and steady release of the analgesic over the critical period. The researchers achieved this by using biodegradable microparticles to package the analgesic, which release the drug in a uniform manner. Experiments conducted on mice showed that this formulation extends the effect of commercially available preparations for up to 24 hours.
The development of such a long-term analgesic is also of great interest to veterinary medicine, as veterinarians currently rely on the same short-acting analgesics available on the market. The injections required by such analgesics and the subsequent stress it causes to the animals can be significantly reduced with this new formulation.
For this achievement, the investigator from the University of Basel was awarded a prize for the best presentation at the annual symposium of the Swiss 3R Competence Centre in 2019.
