Nanomedicine and Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology

Drug Delivery Research

Drug delivery is an essential part of pharmaceutical sciences that should be taken into account early in the drug discovery and development process. A drug that cannot be delivered to its site of action is essentially useless. Drug delivery is affected by the physico-chemical properties of the drug and formulation and the interplay of these factors with the transport, binding, and metabolism of the drug in the body. New tools are needed to accurately predict delivery properties of the compounds early during drug discovery, so that the best compounds can be identified for clinical studies. Another class of tools includes the delivery methods that facilitate delivery of hard-to-deliver compounds to the appropriate target sites. Delivery of gene-based drugs (DNA, oligonucleotides, siRNA) and proteins is a major challenge in pharmaceutical science. Nanotechnology can be used to improve drug delivery in these difficult cases. The development and use of nanoparticles in the formulation of these types of drugs is a major focus at CDR, and we welcome productive industrial partnerships to develop these tools for translational use.