Cell-selective delivery of active compounds
About this project
Upon systemic administration of new drugs entirely unexpected adverse effects can be induced in addition to the anticipated effects, which make the development of new compounds very difficult and time consuming. Therefore, in a first step we aim at the development of cell-selective delivery approaches of approved drugs with established functions and known adverse effects. Currently we test different antibiotics encapsulated in glycan-functionalized liposomes (TargoSpheres®) in in vitro and in vivo settings. The objective of these studies is to preferentially deliver antibiotics to alveolar macrophages, which are amongst to most effectively infected cells during early Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. The hope is that this way antibiotic resistance of Mtb infection can be overcome, adverse effects can be avoided and the overall treatment schedule can be simplified.
More recently we tested the cellular uptake of biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles (NP) made from poly (lactid-co-glycolide) acid (PLGA). Amongst PBMC, antigen presenting cells showed particularly strong PLGA uptake that was even further enhanced when chitosan (CS) coated PLGA was used. This observation points towards the use of CS-PLGA NP as a suitable formulation for vaccines, immunomodulators as well as antibiotics in case of the treatment of pathogens that preferentially infect antigen presenting cells (Duran et al., 2019).
