Jerry Fahrni

One of the best pharmacy jobs I ever had was working for a small compounding pharmacy in the Bay Area of California. Many of the prescription items compounded in this particular pharmacy had to be flavored based on the needs of the patient; sometimes animal, sometimes human. Regardless, the art of flavoring was always a challenge but also a lot of fun. I learned quite a bit about how to mask bitterness, how to use various sweeteners to get the flavor just right and how to use various flavor combinations to create some pretty tasty medications; it’s an art. And don’t underestimate the amount of science that goes into creating flavors like these or the science behind using those flavors to mask unpleasant tastes. It takes time, energy and patience.

FLAVORx, a company in Columbia, MD has taken a lot of the experimentation out of the flavoring equation by creating a system for dealing with “yucky medicine”.

According to the FLAVORx website, their product is in use by over 35,000 pharmacies nationwide. The company website offers a handy Pharmacy Locator to assist you in finding a pharmacy nearby that can flavor your child’s, or your own, medication.

FLAVORx lets children and their parents customize the medicine to whatever they’d prefer it to taste like

Our scientifically tested FLAVORx™ Flavoring System is available at pharmacies nationwide and is designed to make any liquid medication easier for your child to take. Using our unique Bitterness Suppressor and Sweetness Enhancer, Pharmacists mask the unpleasant flavor associated with many prescription and over-the-counter liquid medications. And with our wide assortment of kid-approved flavors, your child (with the help of the Pharmacist) can customize their medicine to suit their individual tastes.

All FLAVORx™ flavors are sugar-free, gluten-free, dye-free, casein-free, inert, and non-allergenic. Our flavors are made from a blend of natural and artificial ingredients and we never use phosphates or other potentially harmful chemicals.

Available flavors include apple, banana, banana orange, bubblegum, chocolate, chocolate cherry, citrus punch, grape, grape bubblegum, grapeade, lemon, orange, raspberry, sour apple, strawberry, vanilla, watermelon and wild cherry.

Check out the FLAVORx Favorable Flavors tool (PDF)

A group of researches has created a hydrogel membrane that “opens” and “closes” in response to magnetic flux. The discovery could lead to delivery systems capable of precision drug therapy for a host of conditions.
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Newscientist.com: “REMOTE-CONTROLLED nano-devices that look like sperm but mimic the corkscrew motion of flagella may one day deliver drugs to where they are needed in the body.”  -The applications here are limitless. I had the opportunity to work on something along these lines when I was an undergrad (Chemistry). We used polyaniline to carry drugs to a specific location. Once at the location, a current was applied directly to the polyaniline, releasing the drug. Of course we had no remote control and our experiments were performed in a beaker, but it was still pretty darned cool. I still have my lab notebooks from back then. Thumbing through them brought back a lot of good memories. Being involved in any type of R&D is exciting and fun, I highly recommend it (if you get the chance).