Drugs advanced therapeutics delivery

Classical drug delivery — Advanced Therapeutics Delivery... 

In addition, artificial materials have been employed in diverse diagnostic and therapeutic applications and biotechnologies, e.g., tracers for advanced imaging technologies, carriers for controlled drug and gene delivery, biosensors and growth supports for cells in a culture. 

Protein and peptide therapeutics currently represent eight of the top 100 prescription pharmaceuticals in the U.S., and biotechnology products are projected to account for 15% of the total US. prescription drug market by 2003. Of the protein and peptide products now on the market, many are administered as daily injections, though several are delivered by noninvasive routes. For example, desmopressin is delivered as a nasal spray, and deoxyribonuclease I is administered by inhalation. Although cyclosporin A is orally active, as yet there are no general means to confer oral bioavailability to peptides and proteins. A major advance in delivery of peptides was achieved with the introduction of a monthly injectable, biodegradable microsphere formulation of LHRH. 

Another very important site for drug delivery is the central nervous system (CNS). The blood-brain barrier presents a formidable barrier to the effective delivery of most agents to the brain. Interesting work is now advancing in such areas as direct convective delivery of macromolecules (and presumably in the future macromolecular drug carriers) to the spinal cord [238] and even to peripheral nerves [239]. For the interested reader, the delivery of therapeutic molecules into the CNS has also been recently comprehensively reviewed... 

As pharmaceutical scientists gain experience and tackle the primary challenges of developing stable parenteral formulations of proteins, the horizons continue to expand and novel delivery systems and alternative routes of administration are being sought. The interest in protein drug delivery is reflected by the wealth of literature that covers this topic [150-154]. Typically, protein therapeutics are prepared as sterile products for parenteral administration, but in the past several years, there has been increased interest in pulmonary, oral, transdermal, and controlled-release injectable formulations and many advances have been made. Some of the more promising recent developments are summarized in this section. 

Smith, J., Zhang, Y.L., and Niven, R., Toward development of non-viral gene therapeutics, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, 1997, 26, 135-150. 

Katre, N. 1993. The conjugation of proteins with polyethylene glycol and other polymers - altering properties of proteins to enhance their therapeutic potential. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 10(1), 91-114. 

Akhtar, S., Hughes, M.D., Khan, A., Bibby, M., Hussain, M., Nawaz, Q., Double, J., and Sayyed, P. 2000. The delivery of antisense therapeutics. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 44(1), 3-21. 

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