The goal of drug delivery is to maximize therapeutic efficacy by transporting and releasing the drug, passively or actively, to the target site in the body minimizing off-target accumulation of the drug. There are many ways to achieve this with the goal to control a compound’s pharmacokinetics, reducing its toxicity, trying to increase the accumulation of the drug at the target site and improving patient acceptance and compliance. Each class of therapeutic will have its own delivery challenges, and with new modalities being introduced rapidly over the last decade, innovation in delivery technologies has gone hand in hand with innovations in therapeutic classes. After an introduction on the efforts spent today on developing new delivery options for the rapidly evolving field of therapeutics, esp. the new modalities coming up and how we can apply all these delivery tools to make patients’ life easier and adherence to therapies better a more in-depth look will be provided to 2 particular areas. Firstly the oral delivery of biologics and secondly inhaled delivery of compounds for systemic delivery, both non-invasive alternatives to injectables. Main purpose is to show what developments are ongoing to improve delivery with the goal to improve quality, patient adherence and hence health. The prologue has no intention to be comprehensive and provide a full overview of delivery option, but a general overview of where the industry goes and highlight a couple of specific choices.
Learning Objectives:
To understand that with a patient-centric approach, new delivery concepts can be designed for existing and new therapies to improve therapy from a safety, efficacy, cost and patient satisfaction perspective.
To understand that simple non-invasive delivery options can be applied for invasive methods thereby also improving adherence.
To understand that also for a wide range of indications that require systemic drug exposure, inhalation may be a better alternative than parenteral or oral delivery.