The technological progress in delivering biotech drugs is far behind the progress of discovering these therapeutic agents. Due to their fragile structure and poor tissue permeability, delivery systems for small chemical drugs are no longer feasible for biotech therapeutics. In order to achieve effective and safe delivery of biotech drugs, delivery systems should be rationally designed to overcome a series of hurdles, including in vitro and in vivo instability and intracellular barriers.
As a research laboratory active in developing delivery technologies for biotech drugs, we are currently focusing our research efforts on three areas of study: 1) sustained-release delivery of protein drugs; 2) cationic polymer-based non-viral gene delivery; and 3) functional nano-particulate systems. To overcome long-standing technical difficulties in biotech drug delivery, the biological barriers encountered in drug delivery must be translated to chemical mechanisms, based on which “synthetic” delivery systems can be designed and assembled. A brief introduction to these studies will be given on the seminar.