In a small study conducted by Lexaria Bioscience, the company compared an oral capsule version of Eli Lilly’s blockbuster weight lost drug, Zepbound, created with Lexaria’s patented DehydraTECH drug delivery technology, to conventional injected Zepbound.
The study was designed to discover whether the active drug in Zepbound – tirzepatide – could be administered using Lexaria’s drug delivery technology via simple oral capsules in order to deliver a useful quantity of tirzepatide into the human bloodstream, as well as provide a viable alternative to injections.
According to Lexaria, the results were “unexpectedly positive,” showing that orally delivered DehydraTECH-tirzepatide reached roughly equal end of study blood-concentration levels as the injected drug. Of those receiving the Zepbound injection, 8 of 10 people experienced peak levels on day 2 of the study and subsequently experienced declining levels, whereas of those receiving the DehydraTECH-tirzepatide, 4 of 8 people experienced their peak levels on the final day of the study, indicating that their levels were still rising at the conclusion of the study.
Lexaria’s DehydraTECH works symbiotically with existing physiological systems to enable improved and more rapid absorption of drugs into the bloodstream and brain tissues. Compounds processed using the system become masked to oral and olfactory receptors, rendering them mostly flavorless and odorless.