Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an umbrella term to define relapsing chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are its two variants. IBD is one of the most prevalent GI diseases, especially in Western countries with ca. 2.5–3.0 million cases in Europe and an estimated direct annual health-care cost of €4.6–5.6 billion. Conventional IBD therapies include drugs such as aminosalicylates, corticosteroids, thiopurines, which mainly provide symptomatic relief. Currently, antibodies against TNF-α (anti-TNF-α) are considered as second line of treatment. However, the use of anti-TNF-α is limited to systemic administration, which in turn has serious adverse effects such as opportunistic infections, infusion reactions, and autoimmune diseases. IBD can. In addition to major adverse effect, IBD has a colossal socio-economic impact by greatly deterring patient’s quality of life by impeding their daily (personal and professional) lives, instilling social stigma and afflicting substantial healthcare costs. Therefore, the aim of the project has been to develop an advanced drug delivery system that could target and localize the anti-TNF-α antibody at the site of action with minimal exposure to systemic circulation and other healthy tissues, which would overcome the critical limitations of the current therapeutic approach to provide safer and efficacious anti-TNF-α therapy for IBD patients. During the project period, we successfully developed nanoparticles-in-film formulation, which encapsulated anti-TNF-α antibody. We demonstrated that after oral administration of antibody-loaded nanoparticles, the inflammatory markers were greatly reduced in murine colitis model.
