Uses of Inactive Pill Ingredients

Some interesting AI driven uses of  'inactive ' pill ingredients.

“Inactive” pill ingredients could raise the dose of your medication
With help from artificial intelligence, researchers identify hidden power of vitamin A and ordinary chewing gum glaze.

Kim Martineau | MIT Quest for Intelligence
March 17, 2020

The average medication contains a mix of eight “inactive” ingredients added to pills to make them taste better, last longer, and stabilize the active ingredients within. Some of those additives are now getting a closer look for their ability to cause allergic reactions in some patients. But now, in a new twist, MIT researchers have discovered that two other inactive ingredients may actually boost medication strength to the benefit of some patients. 

In a study published March 17 in Cell Reports, researchers report that vitamin A palmitate, a common supplement, and gum resin, a popular glazing agent for pills and chewing gum — could make hundreds of drugs more effective, from blood-clotting agents and anti-cancer drugs to over-the-counter pain relievers. They also outline a method for using machine learning to find other inactive ingredients with untapped therapeutic value. 

“Anything you ingest has a potential effect, but tracing that effect to the molecular level can be a Herculean effort,” says the study’s senior author Giovanni Traverso, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Machine learning gives you a way to narrow down the search space.” .... '