By Hayley Lalchand

Ohio Correspondent

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Food scientists at Pennsylvania State University are experimenting with casein, the main protein found in milk, to help make certain medications more child friendly.

Medication for infants and children often need to be available in liquid form. However, not all drugs are dissolvable in water. This can pose issues when making medications accessible for children. For example, the drug Ritonavir, an effective antiviral used to treat acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is insoluble in water and its liquid formulation requires 43 percent, said Federico Harte, professor of food science at Penn State. And not only that, but the drug tastes awful.

“An infant doesn’t have the metabolic pathways to metabolize ethanol,” he said. “There are two issues in this case – one is that some drugs require solvents that are aggressive to young populations. For you and I, flavor may not be an issue. But there is no convincing argument to a 4-month-old that flavor is not a problem.”

Casein may provide a novel way to deliver drugs that are poorly soluble in water to children. Caseins are great emulsifiers, Harte explained. Emulsifiers help to stabilize mixtures of liquids that are unable to mix by reducing surface tension, which allows them to blend into consistent emulsions. Harte and his group are working to replace solvents like ethanol with casein-based amorphous solid dispersions, materials “in which a drug is evenly distributed at the molecular level in a carrier that dissolves easily in water,” according to a press release published by Penn State.

The group recently received funding from the National Institutes of Health to create and optimize casein-based dispersions and demonstrate proof-of-concept. The goal of the work is to understand how the casein-based dispersions react under different pH conditions, how the drug is released during simulated digestion, and what environmental triggers prompt the drug to leave the casein matrix. The team will work with three compounds: Ritonavir, Furosemide (a diuretic), and a natural fat compound called Tristearin. 

Although casein can be created in the lab, Harte sees potential for dairy producers.

“Every time we can bring together a technological advancement that involves milk, we are benefiting the dairy farmer,” he said. “One discovery leads to other things, too. Whether this is going to change the price of milk, that I don’t know. But what we are pursuing is very novel in our perspective.”

Harte’s research group has largely focused on novel uses of casein and milk products, especially in response to the “clean label” movement, or the idea that consumers want ingredients in processed food to be as minimal and recognizable as possible. To that end, Harte has explored casein as an emulsifier and stabilizer for dairy products like chocolate milk and ice cream, which often have added ingredients such as carrageenan.

Previously, the group developed edible, biodegradable fibers, created by combining casein with a type of cellulose. These fibers can be woven into mats and have the potential to be used as biodegradable food packaging and even has biomedical applications such as wound dressings.