- US 9,044,398 (June 8, 2015): Covers the DETERx technology platform for multiple opioids and non-opioids.
- US 7,771,707 B2: Related to abuse-deterrent drug formulations.
- US Application 12/823,628 (2013): Led to a patent for Oxycodone DETERx, focusing on tamper resistance (crushing, chewing, heating).
- US 9,737,530 B1 (Published 2017): For the process of making stable abuse-deterrent oral formulations.
Read them first. If you think about it, it's not hard to think of a number of different stratergies to overcome the technologies. If oxycodone is presented as a zinc complex (a neat way to avoid having to class it as a new drug) then your good. Waxes almost by definition display lowish meltiing points and most soften. If nothing else, it's got to release the medication in the conditions inside the digestive tract so if you aren't in a rush, you could simulate that.
I recall about twenty years ago mention of an 'unabusable' form of Opana (oxymorphone) had replaced the original and within DAYS someone had worked out that the SR employed polyamides so they just put a bunch of the pills into Everclear (so absolute ethanol more or less) and next day the pills were gone.
But whenever someone brings this type of thing up, I worry that the intention is to inject the contents of the pill. That is NEVER a good idea because excipients often end up mixed in with the active and are dangerous if injected.
A lot of myths build up around drugs and back in the 1980s people were claiming that Diconal tablets contained sand (silica) which they did not. That injecting them quickly ruined veins so that was considered proof. So I went and checked and Diconal tablets had never contained silica. They certainly contained excipients that made injection an extremely bad idea... but it's fascinating how when someone even has access to the PIL, they fail to read it and asscribe properties that are not even educated guesses. Just guesses spoken as absolute facts.
So I don't think injecting any pill is a good plan.
In the case of oxycodone it's actually a REALLY stupid plan because when consumed orallly, about 10% of any amount of oxycodone undergoes first-pass metabolism by the liver and is convered into oxymorphone. Now old papers state this as a fact but go on to say that the oxymorphone metabolite isn't significant in the activity of oxycodone. BUT in the last decade use of knockout mice showed that the oxymorphone metabolite was significant and the latest papers suggest that the metabolite might be responsible for half of the activity.
Or, put simply, oxycodone is a rare example of a drug that is more active if consumed orally than if consumed by a parentheral route. I suspect that MAY have been the logic employed by the people who developed Oxycontin. Nobody would shoot them as it would actually be less active. But they didn't communicate the fact and I guess needles give rushes - and some people WANT the rushes.
