Bio-Images & Medimetrics Partner to Deliver Next-Generation Smart Pill Technology

Bio-Images Research and Medimetrics Personalized Drug Delivery recently announced a partnership to introduce the IntelliCap to the global pharmaceutical industry as a clinical research tool. The announcement was made at the annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists this past October in Washington, DC.

Medimetrics’ IntelliCap is the first device that allows patient-specific drug delivery by combining electronically controlled drug delivery with patient monitoring and real-time communication/interaction with the patient. Bio-Images Research is an established leader in the clinical study of pharmaceuticals using scintigraphic imaging. In partnership with Medimetrics, they will now offer IntelliCap as an advanced tool for regional absorption studies in man, supported by a full clinical trial design and management package.

The technology will reduce the time it takes to bring new drugs safely to market by allowing rapid identification of promising drug candidates while quickly eliminating potential failures. This is currently only possible at a much later stage, after substantial R&D costs have been incurred.

“We are looking forward to bringing our scintigraphy and clinical research expertise to this exciting partnership to provide clients with an outstanding drug development tool,” said Professor Howard Stevens, cChairman of Bio-Images Research.

“IntelliCap is an extremely powerful tool for the development of new drugs. It allows directly relevant, minimally invasive, repeatable assessment of candidate drugs, new formulations or functional food performance to be organized and completed quickly and with ease. The partnership with Bio-Images allows us to offer broader service packages to our pharma customers,” added Dr. Olaf Weiner, CEO of Medimetrics.

IntelliCap is a wirelessly controlled electronic capsule system that delivers formulations to user-defined regions of the gastrointestinal tract for regional absorption studies. This is an essential step in lead candidate screening, formulation development, and the development of drug delivery systems. The 11 mm x 26 mm CE-marked device is made up of a microprocessor, battery, pH sensor, temperature sensor, RF wireless transceiver, fluid pump, and drug reservoir. It communicates via its wireless transceiver to an external control unit worn by the test subject.

This groundbreaking technology allows pharma researchers to tailor delivery profiles in response to pH and temperature readings returned from the capsule as often as every 10 seconds, indicating its location in the GI tract at any given moment. The ability to customize the delivery of profiles in this way is a significant improvement on existing wireless capsule systems, which allow only one pulse of drug release.

Bio-Images Research Ltd is a UK-based clinical research company founded in 2000. The company undertakes contract clinical research on drug delivery systems, chiefly using the non-invasive nuclear imaging technique of gamma scintigraphy to assess formulation behavior in man. The company is part of the Bio-Images Group, which incorporates formulation development company, Drug Delivery International, and offers a high level of expertise in drug delivery systems.

IntelliCap was originally developed in 2008 as a research tool under the Philips Medimetrics brand name. The expanding market has seen the emergence of Medimetrics Personalized Drug Delivery B.V. as a fully fledged biotech company in its own right. The new entity, a Philips-associated company, has also won substantial backing from Germany-based Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn GmbH & Co KG. The company’s headquarters are in Heilbronn, Germany, with research labs, service centers, and administrative offices in Europe (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) and the US (New York).