It all sounds like something from a science fiction movie, not the stuff being invented in a lab at Wits University. Substances that can re-arrange the cells in your cheeks, and doughnut-shaped tablets that stick to the back of your eyes?

Professor Viness Pillay isn’t an old man in a white coat. He is a young, smart-looking “suit” who doesn’t look at pharmacy in the traditional sense.

He isn’t concentrating on creating new drugs, but looking at ways the ones we already have can be enhanced and delivered in a way which means less cost and no pain.

Pillay says very few scientists here are working on drug-delivery design, yet he and his team have come up with six inventions in the space of four years, for much less than they would cost overseas.

“In the US it takes five to 15 years to put out a new product, and it can cost up to $800-million (about R5-billion),” he says.

One method he has invented, the wafer delivery system, will minimise the use of injections and deliver medicine into the body almost immediately, instead of waiting an hour or so for a tablet to work.

The wafer is put against the inside of the cheek, where it dissolves within three to 30 seconds, going straight into the bloodstream. It can be used for emergency situations like allergic reactionsas well as for pain relief, insomnia, halitosis and even dental anaesthesia.

“This will help babies and the elderly, who have a problem swallowing medication.”

He has also looked at introducing a permeation enhancer, which will move cells to open up spaces in the cheek so that bigger drugs can pass through, thereby eliminating injections.

Then there’s the multilayered multi-disc tablet, which works according to your body’s clock. “Some things hit at certain hours of the day. Heart attacks, for instance, occur mainly around 4 in the morning. So you should get the maximum protection in the early morning,” Pillay says.

This drug can be taken at 6pm, so that it starts being released later to give protection when one needs it. Sometimes when we take a drug we only get a little of its medicine. This happens when a drug passes too quickly through an absorption window - a specific space in the stomach or intestine where it can be absorbed.

A new gastro-retentive device will stop this by floating on the contents of the stomach, sticking to the stomach walls and slowly releasing the medicine.

Many people suffering from HIV and tuberculosis have to take tablets throughout the day because some drugs cancel each other out in the stomach.

Pillay has come up with a way of putting numerous medicines into one tablet. The once-daily multi-unit system controls where these different medicines are absorbed in the body so that they never come into contact with each other.

If that isn’t enough, Pillay, co-investigator Michael Danckwerts and PhD student Yahya Choonara have created a tablet to be implanted into eyes.

It will bring relief to HIV patients who suffer from inflammation of the retina.

The infection causes blindness if untreated, and 20 to 25 percent of Aids patients suffer from it. At the moment this condition is being treated by injecting the eye, which is very painful and causes cataracts to form.

The doughnut-shaped mini-tablet will mean injections are no longer necessary, but an implant will be put at the back of the eye so that medicine can get to the infection.

“A similar product is on the market, but it costs $5 000, which is not an option for average patients in South Africa, and our product is biodegradable so you don’t have to cut open the eye to take it out.”

Pillay is also in the early stages of developing a device that can be implanted into the brain to target medicine at brain tumours, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. It’s bio-degradable, so an operation wouldn’t be needed to remove it.

Most cancers are treated with chemotherapy, which courses throughout the body and kills good cells, but this device will mean that only the tumour cells are killed.

Although his research will have an enormous impact in the medical field, Pillay is modest about his work, though he admits his department is well known for what it does.

“I am honoured to be working in this field,” he says. “I work with dynamic scientists and we have won many awards. Our work does come out tops. We are seen as being a leading department in the area of drug delivery research in South Africa and we compete on an equal basis with scientists internationally.”

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