X
Pharma Advancement
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Drug Development
    • All
    • Clinical Trials
    • FDA Approvals
    • Research & Development
    Clinical Development

    AI Revolutionizing Drug Discovery and Clinical Development

    Drug-Development

    China’s Super Me-Too Drug Development: A New Pharma Frontier

    Omics Based Clinical Trials

    Asia Pacific Omics-Based Clinical Trials Market Growth

    AstraZeneca Eyes Acquisition To Develop Cell Therapies

    Advanced Instruments All Set To Merge With Nova Biomedical

    Taiho Pharmaceutical Buys Araris Biotech AG For $740 Million

    Oracle Wins the Asia Pacific Biopharma Excellence Awards

    Continuous Manufacturing is Improving Biopharma Production

    AI in Drug Commercialization Market to Grow CAGR 24% by 2032

  • Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain
  • Facilities
  • Insights
  • Events
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Drug Development
    • All
    • Clinical Trials
    • FDA Approvals
    • Research & Development
    Clinical Development

    AI Revolutionizing Drug Discovery and Clinical Development

    Drug-Development

    China’s Super Me-Too Drug Development: A New Pharma Frontier

    Omics Based Clinical Trials

    Asia Pacific Omics-Based Clinical Trials Market Growth

    AstraZeneca Eyes Acquisition To Develop Cell Therapies

    Advanced Instruments All Set To Merge With Nova Biomedical

    Taiho Pharmaceutical Buys Araris Biotech AG For $740 Million

    Oracle Wins the Asia Pacific Biopharma Excellence Awards

    Continuous Manufacturing is Improving Biopharma Production

    AI in Drug Commercialization Market to Grow CAGR 24% by 2032

  • Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain
  • Facilities
  • Insights
  • Events
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Pharma Advancement
No Result
View All Result
Home Drug Development Research & Development

New nanogel for drug delivery

Yuvraj_pawp by Yuvraj_pawp
20th February 2015
in Research & Development

Scientists are interested in using gels to deliver drugs because they can be molded into specific shapes and designed to release their payload over a specified time period. However, current versions aren’t always practical because must be implanted surgically. To help overcome that obstacle, MIT chemical engineers have designed a new type of self-healing hydrogel that could be injected through a syringe. Such gels, which can carry one or two drugs at a time, could be useful for treating cancer, macular degeneration, or heart disease, among other diseases, the researchers say.

The new gel consists of a mesh network made of two components: nanoparticles made of polymers entwined within strands of another polymer, such as cellulose.

“Now you have a gel that can change shape when you apply stress to it, and then, importantly, it can re-heal when you relax those forces. That allows you to squeeze it through a syringe or a needle and get it into the body without surgery,” says Mark Tibbitt, a postdoc at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the lead authors of a paper describing the gel in Nature Communications on Feb. 19.

Koch Institute postdoc Eric Appel is also a lead author of the paper, and the paper’s senior author is Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. Other authors are postdoc Matthew Webber, undergraduate Bradley Mattix, and postdoc Omid Veiseh.

Scientists have previously constructed hydrogels for biomedical uses by forming irreversible chemical linkages between polymers. These gels, used to make soft contact lenses, among other applications, are tough and sturdy, but once they are formed their shape cannot easily be altered.

The MIT team set out to create a gel that could survive strong mechanical forces, known as shear forces, and then reform itself. Other researchers have created such gels by engineering proteins that self-assemble into hydrogels, but this approach requires complex biochemical processes. The MIT team wanted to design something simpler.

“We’re working with really simple materials,” Tibbitt says. “They don’t require any advanced chemical functionalization.”

The MIT approach relies on a combination of two readily available components. One is a type of nanoparticle formed of PEG-PLA copolymers, first developed in Langer’s lab decades ago and now commonly used to package and deliver drugs. To form a hydrogel, the researchers mixed these particles with a polymer – in this case, cellulose.

Each polymer chain forms weak bonds with many nanoparticles, producing a loosely woven lattice of polymers and nanoparticles. Because each attachment point is fairly weak, the bonds break apart under mechanical stress, such as when injected through a syringe. When the shear forces are over, the polymers and nanoparticles form new attachments with different partners, healing the gel.

Using two components to form the gel also gives the researchers the opportunity to deliver two different drugs at the same time. PEG-PLA nanoparticles have an inner core that is ideally suited to carry hydrophobic small-molecule drugs, which include many chemotherapy drugs. Meanwhile, the polymers, which exist in a watery solution, can carry hydrophilic molecules such as proteins, including antibodies and growth factors.

In this study, the researchers showed that the gels survived injection under the skin of mice and successfully released two drugs, one hydrophobic and one hydrophilic, over several days.

This type of gel offers an important advantage over injecting a liquid solution of drug-delivery nanoparticles: While a solution will immediately disperse throughout the body, the gel stays in place after injection, allowing the drug to be targeted to a specific tissue. Furthermore, the properties of each gel component can be tuned so the drugs they carry are released at different rates, allowing them to be tailored for different uses.

The researchers are now looking into using the gel to deliver anti-angiogenesis drugs to treat macular degeneration. Currently, patients receive these drugs, which cut off the growth of blood vessels that interfere with sight, as an injection into the eye once a month. The MIT team envisions that the new gel could be programmed to deliver these drugs over several months, reducing the frequency of injections.

Another potential application for the gels is delivering drugs, such as growth factors, that could help repair damaged heart tissue after a heart attack. The researchers are also pursuing the possibility of using this gel to deliver cancer drugs to kill tumor cells that get left behind after surgery.

In that case, the gel would be loaded with a chemical that lures cancer cells toward the gel, as well as a chemotherapy drug that would kill them. This could help eliminate the residual cancer cells that often form new tumors following surgery. “Removing the tumor leaves behind a cavity that you could fill with our material, which would provide some therapeutic benefit over the long term in recruiting and killing those cells,” Appel says. “We can tailor the materials to provide us with the drug-release profile that makes it the most effective at actually recruiting the cells.”

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Misrock Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health.

Previous Post

New test to predict the effectiveness of cancer vaccines

Next Post

New test to predict the effectiveness of cancer vaccines

Related Posts

Insights

AstraZeneca Eyes Acquisition To Develop Cell Therapies

24th March 2025
Drug Development

Continuous Bioprocessing Market to Surge by 2028

7th March 2025
Insights

Advancing Asia-Pacific Healthcare & Biopharma Innovation

7th March 2025
Insights

Generative AI in Pharma: Opportunities & Challenges

7th March 2025
Drug Development

Global Biopharma Market to Hit $566B by 2032

7th March 2025
Clario joins forces with Mobilise-D to advance Digital Mobility Outcomes in clinical trials
News

Detect-ION and Moffitt Cancer Center Collaborate to Revolutionize Lung Cancer Early Detection

19th August 2024
Next Post

Novartis receives FDA approval of Farydak®, the first HDAC inhibitor for patients with multiple myeloma

Qucik Links

  • Drug Development
  • Manufacturing
  • News
  • Events & Conferences
  • Newsletter Archive
Pharma Advancement

About Us

Pharma Advancement is a leading Pharma information centric website. On one side Pharmaadvancement.com has established itself as one of the most efficient and comprehensive source of Pharma information online, dedicated to providing decision makers in all the Pharma industry sectors with reliable, accurate and useful insights into happenings in the Pharma sector.

Subscribe Us

System

  • Search
  • Sitemap
  • RSS Feed

Resources

  • Advertise with us
  • Contact Us
  • Download Mediapack
  • Newsletters Archive

© 2017 Copyright © Valuemediaservices 2017 All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Drug Development
  • Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain
  • Facilities
  • Insights
  • Events
  • Contact Us

© 2017 Copyright © Valuemediaservices 2017 All rights reserved.

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In