Objective
Underpinned by pharmaceutical-industry estimates that approximately 40% of lipophilic therapeutic molecules are rejected because of their poor aqueous solubility and formulation-stability issues, one of the main challenges facing modern pharmaceutical science is the development of carrier vehicles for the extended delivery of such drug candidates. Additional impetus for such research activities is provided by the potential of such carriers to improve the therapeutic profiles of many of the widely used hydrophobic chemotherapeutants. Nowday, carrier vehicles for the delivery of hydrophobic drugs are associated with several disadvantages: conventional emulsions, micelles and liposomes are thermodynamically unstable; lipophilic carriers cluster in blood flow and are rapidly opsonized and massively cleared by liver and spleen; loading capacity of hydrophobic drugs into hydrophilic carriers is limited. Rationalised in the terms of thermodynamic stability, capability to move through blood capillaries, imrpoved drug loading capacity, surface-charged hydrophilicity, and capacity to effect controlled drug release, one of the approaches towards addressing these issues involves the use of superabsorbent polyelectrolytes-based nanogels with affinity for both water and organic liquids. Towards the development of biomaterials for the delivery of hydrophobic drugs, in this project, biocompatible, polymerisable Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs) based on 1-vinylimidazole and amino acids, as well as nanoparticulate co-polymeric gels of the same RTILs and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA)/1-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone (NVP) with superabsorbency for both water and several organic liquids will be synthesized and characterised. The suitability of the nanogels to be a novel delivery platform for hydrophobic/aqueously unstable drugs will be assessed in vitro in the terms of biocompatibility, drug uploading and release profiles.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IIF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IIF - International Incoming Fellowships (IIF)Coordinator
PO1 2UP Portsmouth
United Kingdom