Within the ERC PoC grant “Dermal-delivery”, we developed a method for delivering liposomes into human skin in order to deliver contents (e.g. drugs) into cells via fusion of liposomes with live cells in the skin. This project is a spin-off from the ERC Starting Grant “Direct Drug Delivery”, in which a method was developed for the fusion between liposomes and live cells.
Scientific results:
Our method of membrane fusion is inspired by natural occurring SNARE proteins, which control this process in-vivo. A set of complementary peptide amphiphiles were designed and these are able to induce the rapid and efficient fusion between two opposing membranes. In the “Direct Drug Delivery”-project we have shown that our method of fusion can be applied to liposomes and to live cells. Since liposomes can be loaded with drugs, this enables the direct delivery of drugs into live cells. In Dermal-delivery we optimized this method for in vivo applications, more specifically for the delivery of liposomes into human skin. Our method therefore enables efficient drug screening and testing in human skin.
Market analysis:
Drug delivery in general into the skin using microneeedles is becoming increasingly more popular as it reduces cost and enables rapid delivery. Furythermore due to the lack of pain sensation by a patient it is expected that it will increase the compliance of the patients. In this project we investigated whether the market for applying our membrane fusion system delivered into human skin using the hollow microneedles is sufficiently large to make the commercialization of this method attractive for investors.
