title: Challenges and solutions for the delivery of biotech drugs--a review of drug nanocrystal technology and lipid nanoparticles.
abstract: Biotechnology allows tailor-made production of biopharmaceuticals and biotechnological drugs; however, many of them require special formulation technologies to overcome drug-associated problems. Such potential challenges to solve are: poor solubility, limited chemical stability in vitro and in vivo after administration (i.e. short half-life), poor bioavailability and potentially strong side effects requiring drug enrichment at the site of action (targeting). This review describes the use of nanoparticulate carriers, developed in our research group, as one solution to overcome such delivery problems, i.e. drug nanocrystals, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) and lipid-drug conjugate (LDC) nanoparticles, examples of drugs are given. As a recently developed targeting principle, the concept of differential protein adsorption is described (PathFinder Technology) using as example delivery to the brain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Biotechnology, Free University of Berlin, Germany. mpharma@zedat.fu-berlin.de
authors.forename: Rainer H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Muller
authors.forename: Cornelia M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Keck
mesh_terms: D001709:Biotechnology / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D003460:Crystallization; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems / Q000379:methods*; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations