SBIR Phase I: Biomaterials and Chemistry to Enhance the Delivery of Medicines in the Body

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve a new technology to deliver medicines in the body. Local medical problems are issues that affect only a specific body part (e.g. left knee pain). These challenges are regularly treated with medications that go everywhere, but only a tiny fraction of the dose given actually reaches the area where they are needed. An ideal drug would concentrate only at its intended target and have no interactions with the rest of the body. Unfortunately, the vast majority of medications in the market are not ideal medications. Before starting a patient on a given therapy, the beneficial therapeutic effects and risk of deleterious side effects of a given medicine needs to be carefully evaluated by the patient and the physician. Indeed, the safety of a drug is one of the most critical hurdles for market approval and contributes to the high cost of drug development and prices. The proposed project recognizes that physicians and surgeons often have temporary access to disease sites of local medical problems via biopsies, local injections and surgeries. Our drug delivery technology allows an implantable material to mark the spot of the body where the procedure was done. For the next couple of weeks after implantation of the material, when the patient takes a medication that usually goes everywhere, the dose is now concentrated and activated at the specific area of the body where the material was implanted. One of the technical hurdles being addressed is determining how the technology is compatible with different drugs. The project will determine our ability to release different drug payloads in vitro and in vivo. These advances will bring medicines closer to ideal medications for local medical problems, improving drug approval rates and reducing the cost of drug development.