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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

The secret life of excipients

  1. Katie Kingwell
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In addition to the active pharmaceutical ingredient, drug formulations contain excipients such as stabilizers, colourants and antioxidants, which are designated as ‘inactive’. However, writing in Science, researchers from academia and industry now report that many commonly used excipients are active at physiologically relevant targets, suggesting more attention should be paid to these often-overlooked drug components.

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Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 19, 585 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41573-020-00134-9

References

  1. Pottel, J. et al. The activities of drug inactive ingredients on biological targets. Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz9906 (2020)

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