The practice of medicine has changed dramatically in our lifetimes, and even greater changes are anticipated in the next 20 years. Drug delivery is one area where substantial progress is being made. Drugs have long been used to improve health and extend lives. Not only have biomedical engineers contributed substantially to our understanding of the physiological barriers to efficient drug delivery, such as transport in the microcirculation and drug movement through cells and tissues, but it is, in part, thanks to their work, that a number of new modes of drug delivery have recently entered clinical practice. Yet, with all of this progress, many drugs—even drugs discovered using the most advanced molecular biology strategies—have unacceptable side effects. Side effects limit our ability to design optimal drug treatments for cancer, neurodegenerative, and infectious diseases. Yale biomedical engineers are at the cutting edge of solving this problem with an alternate strategy for drug delivery, which is based on physical targeting, or placement of the delivery system at the target site, limiting its activity to that site.
Faculty involved with research:
W. Mark Saltzman
– ChE & EnvE
– ChE & EnvE
Themis R. Kyriakides