Somewhere between 40% and 70% of new drug candidates coming out of discovery labs are practically insoluble in water. That number sounds abstract until you realize what it means: nearly half of promising molecules, give or take, cannot dissolve well enough to be absorbed. Meloxicam, a widely prescribed NSAID for arthritis and inflammation, is one of those drugs. It works fine once it gets into the bloodstream. Getting it there is the problem. A team of researchers decided to try something unconventional: pairing meloxicam with both a protein extracted from moringa tree seeds and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP K30), a synthetic polymer that has been used in drug delivery for decades. The…