Novo Nordisk today announced that a research
collaboration has been initiated with the Langer Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for what is hoped to be the next
generation of drug delivery devices for the administration of peptides.
The
aim of the research collaboration, which is conducted at both MIT in
Boston, US and at Novo Nordisk's research facilities in Måløv and
Hillerød, Denmark, is to develop the next generation of drug delivery
devices as an alternative to parenteral or injection-based delivery of
peptides. Professor Robert Langer's laboratory are world-leading experts
in creating new approaches for delivering drugs such as peptides and
proteins across complex barriers in the body such as the blood-brain
barrier, the intestine, the lung and the skin. Together with Dr Giovanni
Traverso, a gastroenterologist and biomedical engineer at Harvard
Medical School, and research affiliate of MIT, they will lead a team in
the development of a platform enabling the oral delivery of peptides.
There
are many challenges of developing and producing a reliable peptide
delivery vehicle. They include avoiding premature degradation in the
body, overcoming poor peptide transport over epithelial barriers,
limiting variability of absorption (caused, for example, by interaction
with food in the stomach), and producing both peptide and the delivery
vehicle in sufficient scale and numbers cost-effectively. If these
challenges can be overcome, as recent research suggests, drug delivery
devices hold great therapeutic promise for a plethora of diseases where
patients need to take frequent injections.
