Course description
Over the past few decades, lipid-based drug delivery, in particular, has experienced significant growth. Several lipid nanoparticle medications are already delivering better clinical results. Now that lipidic drug delivery systems can be designed to be highly responsive in vivo, they have advanced beyond being simple, inert drug carriers.
After the successful development of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) comprising messenger RNA (mRNA) for vaccination against Covid-19, the interest in mRNA and nanoparticle systems for various therapeutic applications has surged tremendously.
As delivery systems, currently LNPs, which are manufactured by a specific protocol with a defined mixture of four lipids are center of attention. However, there are several other nanoparticle formats which have demonstrated to be promising as delivery systems for RNA and other drugs.
Here, concepts for nanoparticle engineering with focus on lipids and polymers are presented, for tailoring of the delivers system according to type of (RNA) cargo, application route and the intended therapeutic intervention.
An important hurdle in developing nanomedicines is scaling up the synthesis of the particles to meet Good Manufacturing Practice standards required for moving the materials to the clinic.
An overview over strategies for manufacturing from early R&D to late clinical stage is given. Approaches for characterization of the systems are presented.
