By Jiawei Wang and Mo Maniruzzaman
Pharmaceutical Engineering and 3D Printing (PharmE3D) Lab, Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, College of Pharmacy, The University of Texas at Austin
In this series, we discuss artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). AI and ML have recently attracted tremendous research attention in pharmaceutical product development and emerged as powerful tools to improve drug manufacturing efficiency and process optimization and monitoring.
Introduction of Drug Delivery Field
Drug delivery is generally defined as the method or process of administering medicine into body to achieve desired therapeutic outcome [1]. Current research on pharmaceutical drug delivery systems can be classified into two broad categories, delivery vehicles and routes of delivery. Drug delivery vehicles aim to ‘package’ drugs within carriers to protect them from degradation and allow them to be delivered into sites of interest. Common drug delivery vehicles include nanoparticles, micelles, liposomes, polymersomes, dendrimers, among others. [2]. Routes of drug delivery are generally classified by the location where the drug is administered. There are two main routes of medication, enteral route (oral, sublingual or buccal, rectal) and parenteral route (intravenous, intramuscular, subcutaneous) [3]. Other routes include intranasal, inhalation, and vaginal delivery. With a better understanding of physiological barriers and impacts substantial progress has been made in drug delivery over the past few decades. Bhadra et al designed PEGylated polyamidoamine dendrimers for efficient delivery of 5-fluorouracil for cancer treatment [4]. Moreover, Oshi et al formulated core (curcumin)-shell (chitosan/alginate multilayers) nanoparticles as oral drug delivery systems for treatment of ulcerative colitis [5]. In addition, Pierre et al developed 5-aminolevulinic acid-loaded liposomes for skin cancer treatment using photodynamic therapy [6]. These examples show typical drug delivery vehicles used for a specific route or specific treatment and represent the versatility of current drug delivery field.