01 January 2020 → 31 March 2023
European funding: various
The aim of this project is to develop innovative drug products, which are able to control the resulting drug distribution in the patient’ body: The drug amount at the site of action is to be optimized, and the amount that is “ost”into the rest of the human body is to be minimized. This is to be achieved by “ite-specific delivery systems” which release the drug at a controlled rate at the site of action. Thus, the therapeutic efficacy will be improved & undesired side effects reduced. This will help reducing the current cost burden on our healthcare systems due to adverse drug effects. The latter are estimated at 79 billion Eur/year in Europe (https://doi.org/10.1111/eci.12875), eq. to 3.1 billion Eur/year in our 2 Seas region. Also, 200k deaths are caused by adverse drug effects in Europe/year (eq. to 8,000 in our region). The diseases/disorders we are targeting affect more than 60 million citizens in Europe (> 2.3 million in our region), whose quality of life is to be improved.
Within the framework of the Site Drug project the research group at the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology (Department of Pharmaceutics, FW01) will design a drug product which provides sustained release of chemotherapeutics in the peritoneal cavity. The majority of patients with ovarian cancer are diagnosed in an advanced stage of the disease with metastases in the peritoneal cavity. The standard treatment of peritoneal carcinomatosis is cytoreductive surgery (to remove larger nodules) in combination with intraperitoneal chemotherapy (to target smaller residual nodules). However, the relapse rate within 5 years is high which is linked to the limited residence time of the chemotherapeutic in the abdominal cavity. The project aims at developing an injectable sustained release system to prolong the residence time of the chemotherapeuticum (paclitaxel) in the peritoneal cavity. The concept of the sustained release drug product is based on crosslinked gelatin mircospheres which form a depot in the peritoneal cavity, releasing the drug over several days/weeks depending on the degree of crosslinking.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF. Neither the European Union nor the authority can be held responsible for any use the may be made of the information contained therein.
