New approaches to design nano and micro-systems that can be used in delivery of biotherapeutics
Snow Stolnik-Trenkic
Associate Professor in
Advanced Drug Delivery, University of Nottingham,
research
overview.
Emerging new therapeutic molecules (e.g. nucleic acids in a form of oligonucleotides, DNA or chromosomes, growth factors, cytokines, interferons, peptide based anticancer drugs, etc.) have biophysical properties that are very different from current drugs. Mostly they are macromolecules that cannot cross biological barriers and/or that undergo degradation in a biological environment and/or are secreted and act locally, with severe toxicity when applied systemically. A need to design drug delivery systems capable of translating such therapeutic molecules into medicines is now moving drug delivery research into new areas. Obviously, a wide variety of delivery systems will be required, whereby a design of particular system will be dictated, in essence, by physicochemical properties of the macromolecule and requirements of the therapy.
The talk will focus on our research in designing drug delivery systems based on application of polyelctrolytes, particularly those present in the body, and is exploring their assembly behaviour to control the systems properties. These include: (i) nucleic acid-polycation complexation in the design of gene/RNA delivery system, (ii) associative phase-separation of polyelecrolytes to design in situ formed, injectable matrix type structures, (iii) layer-by-layer assembly of naturally occurring polyelectrolytes at the cell surface for cell delivery purposes, and (iv) nucleic acid directed assembly to create 3D structures capable of drug encapsulation.
