Rational Design of Drug Delivery Systems

Many drugs must overcome biological barriers and find their way to diseased tissues to be therapeutically effective. A new technology uses a natural ligand called gambogic acid that avoids competition from the body’s owned ligand called transferrin when binding to the target CD 71 cell surface transfer and receptor. Learn more. 

Transcript

00:00:00 many drugs must overcome biological barriers and find their way to diseased tissues to be therapeutically effective this can be achieved by encapsulating drugs into biodegradable nanoparticle Transporters decorated with molecules called ligands that bind to specific receptors on the cell's surface however the body's own ligands can out-compete those on the Transporters if

00:00:24 they are not designed for efficient receptor binding we have used a natural ligand called gambogic acid that avoids competition from the body's own ligand called transferrin when binding to the Target cd71 cell surface transfer and receptor crucially we discovered that the gambagic acid ligands need to be spaced at regular intervals and densities across the nanoparticle

00:00:47 surface to maximize transport this was only possible with our chemically engineered nanoparticle Transporters the therapeutic potential of our technology has been demonstrated in models of disease for example systemic lupus arithmetosis is an autoimmune disease that can cause swollen lymph nodes and is currently treated with systemic disease modifying agents by targeting

00:01:09 our Transporters to the lymph nodes after their absorption from the gut we increase the bioavailability of cyclosporine 4 to 18 fold potentially improving its therapeutic efficacy see we have shown similar data for cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury model for which there is no FDA approved treatment encapsulating a potential drug called urolithin a into our gambagic

00:01:31 acid decorated nanoparticles enhanced its per oral uptake 7-fold reducing mortality by almost two-thirds our customizable drug Transporters clearly overcome biological barriers such as the small intestine we intend to use this breakthrough technology to minimize drug attrition rates in the pharmaceutical industry or offer a route to repurposing existing drugs for diseases that

00:01:55 currently lack effective treatments foreign