Focused on solving drug-delivery challenges

Story written by: Matthew Schmidt

Editor’s note: Professor Perumal has been on the faculty since 2005 and has headed the SDSU Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences since June 22, 2013.

The research in my lab is focused on solving drug-delivery challenges at the interface of material and biological sciences. To this end, our current research is focused on developing oral pediatric drug-delivery systems using natural food protein biopolymers and localized drug-delivery approaches for breast cancer.

The lack of age-appropriate formulations represents a major challenge in the use of many therapeutic agents in children.

To this end, we have developed delivery carriers using zein, a corn protein, as the core, and milk proteins as the shell. The zein core can be used to encapsulate water-insoluble drug molecules, while the outer shell can be used to impart additional functional attributes such as taste-masking, sustained drug release and bioadhesive properties.

The core-shell delivery carriers can be mixed with milk, apple juice and applesauce for ease of administration to children. More importantly, these novel carriers showed five to tenfold higher oral absorption compared to marketed formulations in animal studies. Our research in this area has been supported by industry, commodity groups and state funding agencies.

Four patents have been issued on this drug-delivery technology, which has been licensed to a startup company. Our long-term goal is to use this delivery platform as an enabling technology to address drug solubility, stability and absorption issues for pediatric and other diseases.

Another major research focus is to develop localized drug delivery approaches for the prevention and treatment of early-stage breast cancer. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in women.

Given that the majority of breast cancers originate from the underlying cells in the duct and the lobe in the breast, localized therapeutic strategies can be used to maximize the drug concentration at the target site in the breast and minimize systemic side effects of anti-cancer drugs.

To this end, we have developed transdermal and intraductal drug-delivery approaches. We have demonstrated that the localized transdermal delivery approach can maximize the drug in the breast and minimize systemic drug levels in pre-clinical animal models. We also demonstrated the efficacy of transdermal delivery of a natural compound in a rat breast tumor model.

A patent has been issued for this novel drug-delivery approach and the technology has been licensed to a startup company.

Besides the transdermal delivery system, we have also developed long-acting formulations for direct intraductal injection into the breast.

We have developed long-acting, sustained-release formulations for intraductal injection. Our preclinical studies have demonstrated the ability of the formulations to prolong the drug release and retain the drug in the breast for up to a month in the rat. More importantly, our formulation strategy also prolonged the drug levels in the regional lymph nodes, which is the main site for metastasis of breast cancer.

When fully developed this will be the first-in-class, long-acting localized therapeutic approach for the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. Therapeutic interventions that have been previously unattainable are also likely to become attainable with the successful development of this delivery platform.