Drug delivery


Big issues, nano solutions


Proteins and peptides have come a long way since their medicinal potential was fi rst realised, and yet oral delivery still faces age-old challenges. Andrew Tunnicliffe speaks


with Professor David Brayden from University College Dublin, who uses nanotechnology to try to solve this problem, about some of the methods currently being researched with the aim of making oral delivery a reality.


he use of proteins and peptides in therapeutics has increased greatly over the past few decades, owing to multiple applications in the clinic. The categories themselves simply refer to large molecules that form the fundamental components of cells, while the differences between them relate to their size and structure. Proteins are the larger of the two, comprised of between 50 and 100 amino acids. Peptides, on the other hand, tend to have about 20. “Proteins and peptides are regarded as excellent drugs because they work very specifically as therapies in low concentrations, and they don’t have a lot of side


T


effects compared with smaller molecules,” explains David Brayden, professor of advanced drug delivery at University College Dublin. “I’d include antibodies too, because they’re just larger proteins.” Fairly early in the Covid-19 pandemic, monoclonal antibodies (MABs) – synthetic proteins that act like human antibodies in the immune system – were identified as a potential treatment, and are now even used as a preventative measure in high-risk patients. Only one such product broke through into the clinic prior to the 1990s – but the number being used clinically has now reached 100.


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World Pharmaceutical Frontiers / www.worldpharmaceuticals.net


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